15 Totally Flawless Movie Monologues
10. The Rat And The Hawk - Inglorious Basterds (2009)
The opening of Quentin Tarantino's revisionist World War II drama follows vicious and intimidating SS officer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) interrogating a dairy farmer (Denis Ménochet) about the whereabouts of a missing Jewish family in the area.
The mood is increasingly tense, as Landa sits with the farmer and chats almost amicably, but with sinister connotations. Along the way, Tarantino shows audiences that the missing family are hidden under the floorboards, directly below where Landa is sitting.
It's an incredibly intense opening sequence, crafted with limited music and camera movement, but what makes it so harrowing is Landa's speech.
Talking with calm ease and politeness, Landa - also known as "The Jew Hunter" - describes the differences between the Nazis and the Jews, by likening them to a hawk and a rat, respectively, and slowly deducing that the family are hiding in the farmer's house.
Landa remains one of Tarantino's most malevolent creations, and from the very first sentence of his threatening speech Waltz makes it clear that he's about as evil as they come.