Not nearly enough blood.

Rating: 1/10 (19 October 2003)

My initial reaction upon finding out about "Kill Bill" was largely disappointment ("aren't martial arts films just boring, repetitive fight scenes tied together with a silly story of heroes striving to uphold a sub-human 'code of honour'?"). but I hoped that somehow, Tarantino's wit, visual flair, and 'Escher-like' story construction would shine through.
Having seen the movie, I find that two out of those three aspects of Tarantino's genius survived, but unfortunately the story is utterly stupid (and for me, it doesn't cut it to say "but it was supposed to be stupid"). OK, he puts it into the blender, so that the plot unfolds in a non-linear order, but this doesn't add a damn thing to "Kill Bill" because there's no complexity. The non-linearity becomes little more than a "Hey look at me, aren't I cool?" gimmick. [For instance, does it make a blind bit of difference that the deaths of (1) and (2) are shown in the wrong order? In fact, wouldn't it have made somewhat more sense for Uma to interchange (1) and (2), and Quentin to show them in the correct order?]
Kill Bill has its moments. There's plenty of originality (notwithstanding the barrage of clever references to golden oldies that so inspired QT) and humour (mostly visual, but some funny lines and events, too) and some of the most exciting, spectacular fight sequences ever - for me, the sword vs mace duel was the best of them. The way it's shot, you really feel the impacts, and get a strong sense of the way death, or at least horrific injury, is the immediate outcome of the slightest mistake - this is true for all the fights.
Sadly though, the whole film is pretty much like watching someone play a computer game - a nerdy kid who for a semester has spent all his lunch money on the latest arcade and now wants to impress his peers (and the girls) showing them he can beat it. That's the bottom line.
This film sort-of defies any attempt at rating it in the usual sense, but I'll venture to suggest it deserves 5/10.