Awful!!!

Rating: Null/10 (16 October 2003)

I have been a fan of Quentin Tarantino since I first saw Reservoir Dogs. I've been a martial arts fan for over 25 years. This movie had both, but it stunk. You can always expect there to be a few cheesy moments in every Tarantino film. Usually it works. This time, it didn't. The cheese ruined this film. The main characters all had ridiculous nicknames. No one in this film just bled---if someone was cut, they gushed blood like a geyser or like The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Lastly the soundtrack and sound effects were irritating and way too loud, though this might have partly been due to a hearing impaired projector operator in my local theater. Kill Bill had a couple of things going for it, however... The action in the fight scenes were brilliantly choreographed. If you're going to see this movie just for the action, go ahead. You might enjoy it if you can get past all the cartoon violence. The other thing worth watching in this film was martial arts film veteran Sonny Chiba. He only spent 5 to 10 minutes on the screen (if that), but he was very enjoyable to watch. Like Christian Slater claimed in True Romance, he's the finest actor in martial arts films today! Unfortunately though, we didn't get to see him in action. When they talked about splitting Kill Bill into 2 separate movies, I was upset that I'd have to wait several months to see how it ends. I'm not so worried about that now. I'll wait till Kill Bill: Volume 2 comes on cable. The only way I'll go see it at the movie theater is if Tarantino re-shoots the ending to have Sonny Chiba team up with Uma Thurman's character against Bill (David Carradine).