Inglorious Bastards Review

The Spaghetti Western genre, named after its Italian origin, is a film genre typically based in rural areas and has conventions such as overly violent action, using less dialogue, and adding music to illustrate the scene. Quentin Tarantino uses this genre in his WWII film Inglorious Bastards. He uses this genre due to not only its violence, but I imagine he chose it as well due to the Spaghetti Western's theme of isolation. In his film he had recurring incidents of betrayal, due to a character's own desires. He designed most of the characters as if they were alone fighting the war instead of with a group, such as characters like Hans Landa, Bridget von Hammersmark, and Shosanna Dreyfus. Those characters took actions toward what they thought was right instead of what they were told to do. This is very prevalent in the Spaghetti Western genre. In the genre most of the time is was one lone cowboy against the world, he was also not always a man of great character as he killed people for seemingly small reasons, just as the characters in Inglorious Bastards have committed deadly crimes. Overall, his choice to use the Spaghetti Western genre I felt was necessary for the film to be as good as it was.

This film also had many 'twists and turns' as many times we were unaware of what came next. Quentin Tarantino killed off main characters, used betrayal, and even made characters who were 'evil' seem comical and approachable, subverting the audiences expectations. I remember watching the tavern scene and to my surprise two important people of the American army were killed. Also, at the end of the movie when Hans Landa wanted to switch to the American side in order to save his life I was shocked, because I saw him as a character that would do anything for his country. One last thing that I didn’t expect was to like Hans and Frederick when they were Nazis. They were comical and even seemed somewhat nice, really humanizing the characters which I didn’t expect. These choices kept the film interesting as we never knew who was going to live, who to trust, and whether to like a character or not.