10 Most Intense Scenes In War Films

10. Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds starts in terrifying fashion.

We start with some rather heroic shots of a bearded Frenchman, Monsieur LaPadite, looking on as a German military vehicle comes down the road. We don't know what the conflict here is, but Ennio Morricone's Western-sounding score tells us we are about to see an epic one. Our hero shakes hands with the villain of the film, SS officer Hans Landa, and the dialogue-driven conflict between them starts.

The scene succeeds largely because so much of it is made up of administrative and character details that might seem insignificant at first, but are actually building towards something terrible. We learn Landa is attempting to find Jewish people who have escaped Nazi persecution. Landa makes excuses to stay, starts sharing his disgusting, essentialist views on ethnic and racial character, asking for details about Jewish people who lived in the area, using every element of his rambling monologue to slowly convince LaPadite that he knows precisely what is below their feet, and implicitly and explicitly laying out the consequences and rewards of abandoning his bravery and giving up those he is protecting.

All of these small, insignificant details come together when, in closeup, we finally hear Landa state "You are hiding enemies of the state, are you not?"

The tension is at its height. Every seemingly insignificant, inane detail has led to this: the inevitable breakdown of LaPadite, this man who the camera once framed as our hero. He answers "yes".

We are left, like LaPadite himself, emotionally destroyed, watching the people he protected be ruthlessly and senselessly shot. It's a horrific rendering of the violence of the Holocaust and an introduction to a truly despicable villain.