Not killing them. Just punching them.
Why not killing? Only punching?
1) I'm not a murderer.
2) Punching is more personal.
When you kill someone, usually you're doing it with some kind of weapon as an intermediary. Some people can kill people with their bare hands, but it's not reliable if you want to be sure to get the job done.
Punching someone, though? That's flesh-to-flesh, bone-to-bone. That's your knuckles cracking them straight in the jaw, and hopefully not breaking your own hand in the process. That's visceral and that's where real frustration vents itself.
You can tell by the sound effect they use for it in the movies, that familiar short cracking whip, possibly accompanied by a body thudding to the ground.
Speaking of cracking whips, punching Nazis is one of Indiana Jones' favorite pastimes. Sure, he can pull out his pistol and shoot them, but that's such a remote way of showing someone your disdain. A good fist to the face, and they'll remember it and have to rub it something fierce to make the pain go away.
So yes, it's no surprise I immediately started watching another movie -- yes, another movie, after more than nine hours of Shoah, and more than 14 hours in real time -- in which Nazis get punched, and then followed that with another the next night.
The first was Blood & Gold, the vastly underseen 2023 Netflix movie that I've never heard another person talk about even though it's really good. The setup: It's the waning days of World War II -- literally, like the last two days -- and we open on German soldiers led by a sadistic commander hanging a deserter near a small village in the country. Instead of succumbing -- the sadistic commander told him it wouldn't snap his neck right away and would take time to kill him -- the alleged deserter is cut down by a war widow, who runs a farm with her mentally challenged brother. This puts them in the path of the commander and his superior officer, who are in the village looking gold in the home of a Jewish family who died in the gas chamber.
Peter Thorwarth's movie is shot really well and has a Tarantino adjacent style. If it were done worse, you might even call it a ripoff, but the filmmaking is so good all around that a "loving homage" is the appropriate way to refer to it. It's fast-paced and mid-level violent, just fun enough without being gratuitous, and it gets you out of there in only 98 minutes. What more could I ask for after a nine-hour movie? It made my top ten of 2023 and is really worth seeing.
And are there punched Nazis?
Oh there are punched Nazis indeed.
There are a number of scenes of close physical gouging and mauling and plenty of punch-like activity, but Thorwarth has enough respect for realism that these read more like "subdue your enemy at any cost" fights than they read like "photogenically punch a Nazi square on the jaw" fights.
But you can bet those Nazis are punched all right. Clawed at and cut and spat on and gouged at. Plenty roughed up. Will feel it in the morning.
Sunday night brought chapter 2 in this little informal Nazi-punching double feature, with one of the Nazi punchiest movies out there: Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Speaking of Tarantino.
I had only seen Inglourious Basterds twice, both of which were in the first year of its existence. But that's certainly no knock on it, as it made my top that year and I think of it as being among my top four Tarantino films, joined by Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight.
I don't really need to tell you anything about Inglourious Basterds because surely you have seen it. However, I'll tell you about a funny takeaway I had from the film on this viewing, which I wouldn't have been in the position to have when I last saw it in 2010.
Namely, this is by far the closest Quentin Tarantino has to a Wes Anderson movie. However, I'd say if anything, Wes might have been stealing from Quentin.
Although Tarantino's movies have never been without a sense of humor, I think there are moments of absurdity in Inglourious Basterds that feel almost Andersonian in their presentation. Of course, Anderson's movie that is most like this is The Grand Budapest Hotel, which he would not release for another five years. However, Anderson was doing that sort of quirk before Tarantino was, so maybe there is a little bit of mutual respect showing here.
But what we're really here to talk about is the Nazi punching.
How does Inglourious Basterds fare on that front?
Quite poor, actually.
Oh, plenty of Nazis get theirs -- it's history as revenge fantasy, where essentially the entire top brass of the Third Reich gets taken down in a burning theater, including Hitler riddled with bullets, and then his corpse riddle with some more bullets.
But actual punching is in short supply. Non-existent, really.
The closest we get is that two of the Basterds, who have gotten into the film premiere, strap on wrist guns that fire through a punching action. Two Nazi guards meet their demise from these wrist guns, and I believe the one played by Eli Roth actually engages in a punch of sorts when he fires it.
Oh, and Aldo Raine does head butt Hans Landa. That's pretty personal -- and something you really have to know how to do without hurting yourself unless you want to walk away with a severe headache.
