16 Biggest Oscar Upsets Of The 21st Century

The Rightful Winner: Inglorious Basterds

It's a clash of two very different approaches to the war movie, one which claims to display the horrors of war while also arguably glorifying it and the other making no excuses for its love of violent action.

It's certainly not surprising that The Hurt Locker won the Oscar for Best Picture given the political climate at the time but whether it should have or not is a very different matter.

While it's true that there are some very harrowing sequences in Bigalow's movie, there are also a few (looking at you sniper sequence) that wouldn't look out of place in a Call Of Duty mission. This becomes even more of an issue with hindsight. A bizarre duality between displaying war as hell and then, moments later, turning it into an action spectacle can be seen throughout Bigalow's work including the 157-minute advert for the effectiveness of torture, Zero Dark Thirty.

Over on the other side of the fence, Tarantino's typical penchant for violence and snappy dialogue is in full swing as his characters gleefully murder their way through scores of Nazis to their ultimate goal of capping the führer.

There's also the small fact that Inglorious Basterds is a very well-paced, brilliantly acted and beautifully shot feature that revels in everything that made Hollywood the global powerhouse it is today.

The lesson here seems to be that patriotism trumps quality.