10/09/09<br /><br />Many bastards these days: I had the chance to see Quentin Tarantino's latest film Inglourious Basterds a couple of days ago and last night I finally saw Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 film Quel maledetto treno blindato, better known as The Inglorious Bastards. I say finally because I received the 3-disc DVD of "Bastards" I ordered I don't know two or so moths ago and between this and that I didn't saw it till last night. So, not long ago in IMDb there was a link to a list of the WWII films you should see before seeing Tarantino's great film (if not his bestthat's certainly another story). Can't remember all the titles the blogger mentioned but I do remember that The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, Kelly's Heroes, The Great Escape, Ilsa She Wolf of the SS and Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One were part of the list. Of course "Bastards" was also part and well, I will be trying to see all of those films now not before but after Tarantino's "Basterds" and yes, I'm still a newcomer in regards of war pictures and yes if not for QT I probably would have never seen this film, hell anyways it would have never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray (the 3-disc edition contains a really great conversation with QT and Castellari). <br /><br />Anyway, in "Bastards" the bastards ain't some sort of special team of soldiers, ain't on a really big mission, the bastards are well just that, a bunch of inglorious bastards that will be together just because, well I was going to write the word destiny but I better write that just because some Nazis attacked the prison convoy they were part of. By the end they were the only survivors, no other prisoners, no military, just them, not quite exceptional soldiers, in a Nazi-occupied France, certainly without been able to go back to their own lines, just trying to get to Switzerland. <br /><br />And they are Lt. Robert Yeager (Bo Svenson), Pvt. Fred Canfield (Fred Williamson), Tony (Peter Hooten), Nick (Michael Pergolani) and Berle (Jackie Basehart). I began this comment by saying "many bastards" but of course not in a bad way and basically I could begin my comment saying something like "many truly memorable characters with both Bastards and Basterds". Here each one of the mentioned five delivers many awesome moments: we have the two bad-asses in Svenson and Williamson's characters, the truly skilled soldiers that can easily beat the s*** out of any Nazi or, if necessary, any American. With Tony we have the classic annoying dude who likes to see how far he can go with being annoying to certain soldiers and with Berle, well we have basically the "kid" that can't deal with war and that will be protected by both Yeager and Canfield. I have only left to talk a bit about one of the bastards, the long-haired Italian dude Nick: boy, he is so much fun! He steals not only pretty much the film but also pretty much anything!<br /><br />The language thing is really good, I mean you know aside of English we have German, French and Italian. It's fun sometimes and that type of fun is also in "Basterds"; here we have first a German soldier with the bastards and he at one point will give Tony and the Italian dude a surprise, that is not quite as dangerous as in "Basterds" but really funny: Tony thinks this German only speaks German so he insults and stuff, you know (in "Basterds" the Jew Hunter, Christoph Waltz's character at one point surprises everybody with his really good Italian! And well, Brad Pitt's character and his Italian is just fun!). Also I loved the part with the French guy who apparently knows how to speak English"s***, son of a bitch, f****** bastards"!<br /><br />There's plenty of action in the film and plenty of great funny bits (most of them coming from the Italian dude), it's a very entertaining adventure meanwhile our bastards get to be part of a real Allies mission. It's great because at first it was just more of the same, I mean more killings and more lies with the bastards, now they killed a bunch of American soldiers thinking they were Germans and took advantage of the confusion of the French pretending to be, this time, certainly not Germans but other Americans, the American soldiers they just had killed, the American soldiers that were especially trained for a mission. But by the end of the day the Colonel in charge has in front of him not quite "a gang of deserters, cut-throats and thieves" but a skilled team of real soldiers ready for the mission and well, a damn gun pointing to him! What follow is the deadly mission, them bastards doing just a pretty darn glorious work. It's exciting. <br /><br />PS: for a little fun check out the awesomely visible wire of one of the killed by Canfield Nazis at 00:34:00.