A lod of self indulgent waffle.

Rating: 2/10 (25 February 2015)

Vanity projects are usually made by people who, after receiving a lot of praise and support for their work, want to make something that is personal to them and therefore don't really care what anyone thinks of it in the process (usually because they wrongly believe that people will still eat it up due to the artist behind the project rather than the art itself). Sadly, this often means that they are terrible in every sense of the word, due to a lack of quality control. Due to a poor storyline, no character development and a lot of sadistic violence, this film is no exception to this rule.
The story is that a woman only known as The Bride has been left in a coma after her old assassin posse knocked her unconscious and killed mostly everyone at her wedding day, including her husband to be and, potentially, her unborn daughter. After awakening from this coma, she seeks bloody revenge against them, killing them one by one. While the story is a simple revenge plot, it becomes overly convoluted as Tarintino adopts a non- linear structure to the film, but unlike his previous films that had a similar structure, some parts of the film lack context to the events on screen, and you feel very lost, as if there was a previous instalment to this that you missed.
The rest of the writing is equally inept. None of the characters are very developed, and it is hard to care about anyone because of it. There are also a lot of plot holes throughout the story as well, including how the police never bother showing up despite the violent murders that the Bride commits (I.e killing a doctor but never bothering to hide his body, killing a mother in front of her own daughter, the massacre in the Japanese restaurant at the end) or how Lucy Liu got to the head of the Yazuka (the Japanese mafia) despite having awful bodyguards and fighting skills that are adequate at best. The fact that there are many pointless scenes here as well don't help as they often slow down the story and bore you, mainly the animated scene.
Another major problem is how casually the film wallows in its sadistic violence. People are decapitated, eyes are pulled out, people see their families murdered and limps are often cut off. However the violence isn't displayed in an OTT manner, but rather in a more serious way with people screaming in agony and wriggling around like worms when their legs are chopped off. That isn't fun violence but rather deeply unpleasant and needless carnage. It strikes me as odd how the game Manhunt (released at a similar time) is yelled at for being too violent, but no-one bats an eye at this, despite it being perhaps worse, as unlike Manhunt it lacks any context and is just sadism for sadism's sake. Sadism also extends to other areas as well, like a doctor who rapes comatose patients and a guy getting his head slammed into a door for information. It's utterly grotesque and while not morally bankrupt like Natural Born Killers is per say, still makes you feel dirty after seeing it.
There are some good things here to though, mainly that of the production design. Sets are gorgeous and are beautifully shot, and the HD version I saw makes them feel more alive and colourful. The soundtrack by Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA is great too, and compliments the Asain influences of the film very well. The acting is also quite good, with all actors giving much better performances than the film deserves.
Sadly however, those good things don't make a whole, as the film's flaws completely sink it, due to poor storytelling, characters and handling of violence, becoming sadistic for the sake of it. It is because of this that I would find it very hard to recommend Kill Bill to anyone, except die hard Tarantino fans and adolescents nitwits who don't know any better. Tarantino is a great filmmaker, and he can do so much better than this slock, but thanks to a complete lack of scrutiny and quality control, he wastes his talent on self indulgent vanity projects like this. Critics and audiences many continue to dump praise onto this based on the goodwill Tarantino earned through his early work, but the awfulness of work like this demonstrates that goodwill doesn't excuse dreadful dreck. Avoid at all costs.