17 Years Ago, Quentin Tarantino’s Wildly Audacious WWII Action Classic Broke the Genre’s Biggest Rule

World War II epics tend to emphasize the overwhelming scale of the conflict. Allied forces storm the beaches of Normandy, tanks rumble across Europe, and in some cases, soldiers are just trying to get Matt Damon home. Naturally, Quentin Tarantino doesn’t take a conventional approach to the genre. While his 2009 movie has its fair share of explosions and bloodshed, its most thrilling battles unfold during tense conversations. In perhaps the best example, one man seals several people’s fates simply by holding up three fingers the wrong way.

That contrast is central to Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s 2009 alternate-history revenge fantasy, which arrived on Hulu on Sept. 1. The original trailers promised Brad Pitt leading a band of Jewish-American soldiers through Nazi-occupied France, collecting enemy scalps and instilling fear within the Third Reich. The movie delivers on that promise, but the Basterds’ brutal campaign is just one part of a more surprising and suspenseful story that remains memorable and iconic 17 years later.

Tarantino’s body of work is full of excessive, extravagantly stylized violence, but that violence usually serves a clear dramatic purpose. For a movie about war, Inglourious Basterds is also surprisingly restrained. Its moments of grotesque bloodshed arrive as brief explosions following long stretches of nearly unbearable tension, much of it generated through quiet conversations.

This strategy gets established immediately in the memorable opening scene, when SS Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) visits a French dairy farmer suspected of hiding a Jewish family. Landa appears courteous and affable as he asks for a glass of milk, exchanges pleasantries, and gradually reveals why he has come. Waltz’s friendly demeanor is initially disarming, which only makes the scene more frightening as Landa drops the pretense and steers the conversation toward an inevitable massacre. That opening scene brilliantly establishes an essential facet of the entire movie: what secrets is a person hiding when they enter any given conversation?

Inglourious Basterds frequently explores the distance between who characters are, who society expects them to be, and who they need to appear to be in order to survive. Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who survives the massacre of her family in the opening scene by running away on foot, eventually builds a new life under a new identity. German movie star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) secretly works for the Allies. British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) speaks fluent German but can’t hide his real identity when he doesn’t know the nuances of cultural gestures.

Everyone is forced to perform a certain role as a means to an end, which makes virtually every conversation in Inglourious Basterds feel more tense than the last. Language, accents, etiquette, and even food become weapons or tools for disguise. Nowhere is that clearer than in a sequence that takes place in a tavern midway through the movie.

The Basterds are eventually recruited for Operation Kino, an undercover mission to infiltrate a film premiere and assassinate the Nazi leadership. Hicox poses as a German officer escorting Hammersmark, but their rendezvous in the basement of a French tavern is interrupted by Gestapo Major Dieter Hellstrom. A film critic who specialized in German cinema before the war, Hicox speaks fluent German and invents a plausible explanation for his unusual accent. Then he orders three glasses by raising his index, middle, and ring fingers (rather than thumb, index, and middle fingers). Hellstrom instantly recognizes it as a non-German gesture, and Hicox’s cover is blown.

The mistake takes only a second. Everyone sitting at the table understands what it means, but Tarantino delays the resulting shootout just long enough for them to reckon with the fact that they’re already dead.

Tarantino’s detractors could call scenes like this a bit indulgent, but the dramatic tension of these drawn-out conversations is the point. His characters are constantly studying one another for weaknesses. When violence finally erupts, it is sudden and disorienting. Bits of levity offer brief moments of comedic relief, but the tonal shift also enhances that feeling of instability. In Tarantino’s world, even a funny scene can become a bloodbath without warning.

The Basterds offer the immediate gratification of watching Nazis get beaten, shot, scalped, and permanently branded. But Shosanna’s story offers an even more satisfying feat of vengeance that requires a lot more patience. After learning that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi high command will attend the premiere (which is being held at her movie theater), she plans to trap them inside and burn the building using highly flammable film stock.

Destroying the Third Reich, a regime that wielded cinema as propaganda, through cinema itself is classic heavy-handed Tarantino irony. But Inglourious Basterds commits to the idea with such fervor that burning the Nazi leadership, Hitler included, feels earned rather than ridiculous. In the end, Shosanna takes control of the screen, announces her revenge in a pre-recorded message, and laughs through the smoke as the theater burns. Hitler, portrayed throughout the movie as a petulant, blustering fool in a cape, is riddled with bullets before an explosion tears through the building.

That ending was mind-blowing in 2009 because Inglourious Basterds seems to operate within a historical drama. Audiences know how World War II ended, so we naturally assume that Hitler must survive whatever fictional mission Tarantino has invented. No such squad of Basterds existed, but the scale of their operations within the broader framework of the war feels plausible. Then the movie rejects that assumption and gleefully rewrites history.

When you think of alternate WWII histories, it’s usually stories like Man in the High Castle where the Nazis win and reshape the world. Inglourious Basterds instead breaks with history to punish them in a satisfying way that real life couldn’t. Tarantino strips Hitler of his historical power, makes him look ridiculous, and gives him the humiliating death he deserved.

The result is deeply satisfying cinema. 17 years later, Inglourious Basterds remains as gratifying as ever: a movie bold enough to rewrite history and skillful enough to get away with it.

Inglourious Basterds is available to stream on Hulu.