20 Idiotic Decisions Made By Characters In Quentin Tarantino Movies

4. Hans Landa Lets Shosanna Escape (Inglourious Basterds)

One of the greatest opening sequences from any Quentin Tarantino movie occurs in Inglourious Basterds, as The Jew Hunter himself, Hans Landa questions a French dairy farmer, who eventually confesses to harbouring the Jewish Dreyfus family beneath his farm house. Landa orders his men to shoot through the floorboards, seemingly killing the entire family, except for one of the daughters, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), who Landa watches flee into the distance. Though Landa briefly points his gun in Shosanna's direction, he makes no real attempt to capture or kill her, instead jokingly shouting, "Au revoir, Shosanna!" This turns out to be a huge mistake on Landa's part, as Shosanna goes on to run a cinema in Paris, the very cinema which, at the end of the movie, she burns down, which with the help of the Basterds, results in the death of Hitler and other prominent Nazi officials who are attending a movie premiere there. Had Landa just killed Shosanna when he had the chance, then Frederick Zoller wouldn't have fallen in love with her and convinced Joseph Goebells to host the premiere at her cinema, which combined with the Basterds' Operation Kino, greatly enhanced the chances of Hitler and co. being killed. This may not have been of particularly great impact to Landa himself, a calculated opportunist who manages to bargain a deal at the end of the movie, though his negligence ensures plenty of death and destruction, and with his surrender comes a permanent reminder of his crimes: a swastika carved into his head by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt).