According to Quentin, one of his universes is made up of the crime-driven, ultra gritty world of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and the script versions of Natural Born Killers and True Romance. Track the names “Skagnetti,” “Alabama,” or “Vega” and you’ll start to get what I mean. His other universe is also a crime-driven, ultra gritty world, but allows for the fantastical. Here is where Death Proof, From Dusk ‘Till Dawn and Kill Bill reside. Don’t believe me? Michael Parks plays the same character in each of them.

When reading Inglorious Bastards I was immediately struck at how different it was from anything else Tarrantino has done, and that it didn’t fit into either universe. Obviously– it’s a period piece and lacking in the usual crime figures Quentin revels in. What’s also lacking are leads who are too badass and invincible for their own good, endless amount of overt references to films that inspired the work, disjointed chronology and enough pop culture references to bury VH1.

This is where Quentin has evolved. “Bastards” is the first time his influences are not directly referenced in the work itself. Example– Death Proof. While I liked the movie, I never felt it quite made the Grindhouse experience. Planet Terror, was a Grindhouse film. Death Proof was a Tarrantino film that payed homage to Grindhouse.

Since Bastards is set in the 1940s, there is really no way to reference war films that didn’t see their biggest boom until the 50s and 60s. While films and film history are integral to the plot, the only movies these characters talk about are the ones they are dealing with directly. In fact, the only real pop cultural references Tarrantino displays is to film certain sections of the movie in different styles that emulate other moments in film history. One section is meant to resemble the French New Wave style, another a Spaghetti Western. What’s interesting, is that neither of these styles existed during the era the film takes place in, but were contemporaries of the golden age of war films during the 60s.

I don’t think Tarrantino will ever really lose his perspective or use of pup culture in his films, but if he continues down this road of post-modernism and making these references more veiled and oblique he’s going to dispel the negativity heaped on him by his detractors.

So enough film school babble. What’s the movie about? Surprisingly, not what you think. While the titular Bastards, (or “Basterds” as the barely high school educated Tarrantino types them), are a force to be reckoned with, they are not the sole focus of the film. The supposition of this being film a Dirty Dozenesque picture where a group of ruffian American soldiers run wild in eastern Europe, is pretty far from the mark.

The Bastards are not ex-cons, but in fact a group of very pissed off Jewish Americans put together to flip the persecution game on the Nazis. The Bastards are lead by a self admitted hick named Aldo, who, if the innarweb rumors are true, is a part being shopped to Brad Pitt. Two of the Bastards are German born, the rest are relatively faceless save for Donowitz, (“Donny” to his friends, “The Jew Bear” to the Nazis) a mad-as-hell Jew that carries a baseball bat to beat Nazis that every little old Jewish woman from his hood back in Boston has signed their name to.

The film is also the story of Shosanna, a young Jewish girl whose parents are killed by the film’s primary antagonist, SS Colonel Landa. Shosanna goes into hiding in Paris where she works, and a couple years later, inherits a movie house. She is annoyingly courted by Fredrick, a Nazi officer that also happens to be the star of Goebbels’ latest propaganda film.

Much like Kill Bill, the story is broken up into chapters: 1. Once Upon A Time… Nazi Occupied France, 2. Inglorious Basterds, 3. German Night In Paris, 4. Operation Kino, 5. Revenge of the Giant Face.

Chapter 1 begins with Col. Landa reveling in his role as the SS “Jew Hunter” as he hunts down Shosanna’s family hiding out on a dairy farm. The bulk of this section involves a lengthy Tarrantino style bantering game of words between Landa and the farmer who hides the Jewish family under his kitchen floor.

Chapter 2 introduces us to the Bastards, by way of Hitler himself hearing tales of the savage soldiers from a lone Nazi soldier that was allowed to return to Germany– with a swastika carved into his forehead. The Bastards obviously know how to spread their own brand of propaganda.

Chapter 3 finds Shosanna now in the guise of Miss Mimieux, who runs a small Parisian theater. She is hit on by Fredrick, who is borderline obsessed with her after he realized they are both cine-o-philes. He hounds her, and eventually takes her to dinner with Goebbels and Landa (who seemingly does not recognize her). Frederick is so enamored with her, that he contrives the arrival of the film’s MacGuffin (nearly an hour in). Fredrick convinces Goebbels to hold the premiere of their latest film at her theater.

Chapter 4 finds the Bastards being tapped for a mission. Via a Mata Hari-esque spy in the German cinema elite, British Intelligence has learned of the film’s debut. “Operation Kino” teams the German actress spy with a British agent (who has a film history education) to infiltrate the premiere as Hitler, Goebbels, Goering and Boorman will all be in attendance. Killing the four of them will end the war. The Bastards are meant to be support, but when a simple rendezvous in a German beer haus goes wrong and the British agent is killed, it looks like it will be all up to them.

Meanwhile, Shosanna has planned her own operation. She plans to lock the Nazi elite into the theater and capitalize on film’s naturally flammable nature to burn them all to ashes.

Chapter 5 brings the two stories together as Fredrick’s film debuts. In a way, Aldo and his Bastards, Landa and Shosanna each succeed in their individual plans, but none of them in the way we expect. To really feel the impact of the end, one needs to follow the story, so I won’t spell out the fate of the leads here. Read and/or watch that one for yourself. I will say though, that evil is punished, and in its final moments, Inglorious Bastards does what most war films do no. It does what propaganda aims to do… it changes history. The outcome of WWII in this film is not what transpires in real life. It’s a bold thing to do, but this is a story about perspective and point of view– vis a vis films, propaganda and revenge. At the end of the day, it’s an ending that is perfectly justified.

Returning to the two Tarrantino universes, it’s quite possible that the version of history established here is the genesis of the more fantasical world inhabited by Beatrix the Bride, who takes her katana on international flights. Or where a foot-licking Kurt Russell runs down hot young women on the backroads of America.

Either way, I hope this story/film is not a fluke and really is a bold new direction for Tarrantino. My biggest disappointment is that I’m going to have to wait a year or two to actually see it.