Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender and Eli Roth. The film tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietor (Laurent), and the other by a team of Jewish-American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt). The film's title was inspired by director Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 Macaroni Combat film, The Inglorious Bastards.

 

A group of hardened Nazi killers stalk their prey in Nazi-occupied France as a Jewish cinema owner plots to take down top-ranking SS officers during the official premiere of a high-profile German propaganda film. As far as Lt. Aldo Raine -- is concerned, the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. Raine's mission is to strike fear into the heart of Adolf Hitler by brutally murdering as many goose-steppers as possible, or die trying. In order to accomplish that goal, Lt. Raine recruits a ruthless team of cold-blooded killers known as "The Basterds" which includes baseball-bat-wielding Bostonian Sgt. Donnie Donowitz and steely psychopath Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), among others. When the Basterds' secret rendezvous with turncoat German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) goes awry, they learn that the Nazis will be staging the French premiere of "The Nation's Pride," a rousing propaganda film based on the exploits of German hero Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), at a modest theater owned by Jewish cinephile Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), posing as a Gentile after the brutal murder of her family by the ruthless Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). As the Basterds hatch an explosive plan to take out as many Nazis as possible at the premiere, they remain completely oblivious to the fact that Shoshanna, too, longs to bring the Third Reich to its knees, and that she's willing to sacrifice her beloved theater in the process.

 

Development began in 1998, when Tarantino wrote the script. The director struggled with the ending and chose to hold off filming and moved on to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007 (as part of the double feature Grindhouse), Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. The film went into production in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget. Inglourious Basterds premiered on May 20, 2009 at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It was widely released in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Studios.

 

The film was commercially successful, grossing over $321 million in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film to date. It received multiple awards and nominations, including eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. For his role as Hans Landa, Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the BAFTA Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, Golden Globe Award, and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.