The Gentile Giant

Any film student will tell you that there are two lessons that can be learned from watching Quentin Tarantino’s filmography.  First, any washed up actor can be game for a comeback, given the right combination of wigs and soundtrack.  Second, revisionist history can be fun.  It’s Nazi-occupied Europe, 1941.  Rabbi Cohen (played by Billy Zane) is the spiritual leader of a Jewish Ghetto that’s days away from a one-way ticket to Auschwitz.  In a highly stylized monologue, told out of order and intercut with shots of the horrors of the times, Rabbi Cohen prays for a miracle.  Enter “The Gentile”, a 9 foot tall muscular mass of righteous vengeance (and Brendan Fraser comeback vehicle).  Cheer for The Gentile as he frees Rabbi Cohen’s people from the ghetto, gathering an ever-growing army of the oppressed as he roams across axes territories obliterating concentration camps and crushing Nazi skulls.  Is such revisionist story telling responsible?  We answer that with another question- is that really the most important question to be asking during a pandemic?