Kill Bill (Cinema: October 2003)

First off, Tarantino's much anticipated return is something of a letdown. Whilst critics (and Spike Lee) were quick to lambaste Jackie Brown and will no doubt perform the same service with Kill Bill, it's not entirely fair to blame the filmmaker. Both films are exemplary pieces of modern cinema its just that both fall short of that acursed yardstick Pulp Fiction. So let's get this out of the way now: chances are, he'll never make another film to match it & in all likelihood never top it so let's not waste our time with comparisons, eh? The man himself has said he's here for the long haul, preferring quality to quantity, and taking a break after Pulp Fiction while the rest of the western world cashed in & churned out QT clones was an applaudable move. Unfortunately this has left our' Quentin in a quandary: everybody is pleading for another Tarantino movie but nobody wants to SEE another Tarantino movie.

With Kill Bill, the big T sticks with his signature style of b-movie pastiche, this time setting his sights on the martial arts genre. The problem with Kill Bill Volume 1 is twofold: one, you only get half a movie which (a) makes it unfair to review and (b) because of the nature of Tarantino's plot structuring, pretty unsatisfying to follow. And two, T has made such a decent pastiche of bad kung fu movies he's actually left all the rotten bits in. Hence Kill Bill Volume 1 is at best confusing and at worst, cumbersome, superfluous & pretty damn unrewarding.

But like I said before, don't blame the director, blame Miramax bigwig Harvey Weinstein for putting profits before cinemagoers by ordering QT to cut it down from 3 hours so he could get more bums on more seats in more performances every day...hence the two halves.

Still, the soundtrack was worth the wait and as a whole, I wouldn't bet against the complete movie being the best bad ass martial arts b-movie since Nine Deaths of the Ninja.

RATING:

(c)Limer 2003