Tarantino's Worst Film To Date

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2004)

Before you jump to any conclusions after reading the title of my review, let me clear a couple things up. One, I usually love Tarantino--his directing, writing, the films he's produced, etc.--and two, the reason I didn't like Kill Bill Volume 1 had nothing to do with not liking the fight scenes or violence/gore. I love that stuff and that's the only part of the film that I found even mildly entertaining.
Instead, the problem with Kill Bill Volume 1 is that it is extremely boring, almost completely lacks suspense, has awful pacing, and makes a number of self-indulgent stylistic missteps.
I say "almost completely lacks suspense" only because of the first, relatively short section, where Uma Thurman's character, a former "hitperson", fights with another of the same kind, played by Vivica A. Fox. Suspense arises here because we don't know who the characters are yet, we don't know anything about the plot, we don't know what their motives are, etc. There is a sense of venturing into the unknown, where anything could happen.
However, after this, Tarantino chooses to cling too tightly to his beloved device of non-sequential story construction, and the bulk of the film concerns Uma Thurman's attempt to take down a character whom we already know she has killed. That saps all of the tension from the rest of the film and makes it plod along as a fulfillment of something we're already aware of. It has all the drama of listening to your spouse tell _that_ story for the fiftieth time, this instantiation being filled with enough detail to take up an hour or two, and you're trying to read a book while they're telling it.
Yes, Tarantino references tens of other films and genres in a "homage" that geeky fanboys can have a party game with--the one who names the most receives a free graphic novel and a case of Hawaiian Punch. Who cares? That in itself doesn't make Kill Bill a good story any more than a pointless clipfest of those films would make a good story. There is a reason that DVD's consisting only of promotional trailers aren't usually bestsellers.
Yes, there are some interesting shots and intriguingly blocked scenes in Kill Bill. However, there aren't enough of them to make the film succeed if looked at merely as a series of images rather than a story.
And yes, as I mentioned, I thought the over-the-top violence/gore was entertaining. If looked at isolated from its context, Quentin almost outdoes Sam Raimi ala Evil Dead here. However, and this is a big however due to having to consider context, Raimi's gallons of blood worked much better-because they were in an engaging, suspenseful story. In Kill Bill, the violence was almost boring.
In an effort to be "retro hip", Tarantino includes a number of elements that blend with the film as seamlessly as President Bush in an Iraqi mosque. These are ubiquitous and varied, ranging from the stilted dialogue in the kitchen scene near the beginning (and this coming from someone who usually writes brilliant dialogue), to the strained inclusion of Sonny Chiba, to the ridiculous presence of a female Japanese band who can't sing or play their instruments--even though they're only trying to play I-IV-V "rockabilly" (and by the way, if this is what Tarantino think counts as quality music, what was he doing as a judge on American Idol?), to the almost obligatory occurrence of an anime scene. The latter is there just because Quentin and the fanboys think it's cool. For me, however, it underscores both the problem with most anime and with Kill Bill--yes, the subject matter, the violence, the attitude, etc. are interesting, but the animation, the storytelling, the pacing, and just about everything else sucks, and there are a number of inexplicable stylistic choices (such as the Caucasian-looking, big-eyed characters in anime). 'Forced' is probably the best way to describe the plethora of references and stylistic decisions in Kill Bill. Even the foot fetish stuff didn't work for me this time around, and I share the fetish with Tarantino.
I'm not usually one to recommend tempering self-indulgence, and I suppose it doesn't matter anyway, since at this point people are going to love Tarantino films just because they're Tarantino, although if this film were made by anyone else, it would have earned the reputation of the 1998 Jeremiah Chechik-directed The Avengers instead. But if this is a sign of the quality to come, if Quentin is going to make further films that amount to laundry lists of all the stuff he likes _just because he likes it_, like a mega-budget mix-tape for a new girlfriend, I'm not watching any longer.