KILL BILL Vol 1.. in fact kill both films.. please.

Rating: 1/10 (17 July 2013)

Yet another example of creative film making which had the potential to be fantastic but ended up miserable. Kill Bill Vol 1 (and Vol 2 for that matter) is an ponderous, pretentious, overlong, disappointing revenge drama which clearly and easily could have been saved via the normal efforts of a decent story or objective movie editor who was NOT Mr. Tarantino or influenced by him. I believe Tarantino, like Lucas and many other notables, do their best work when they do not have too much control over the story and pacing. KB has many fine points- an original plot, great casting, music, great camera work. But, fails completely in the script, pacing, and yes the action sequences, which are vital to the creation of a good movie especially of this genre. The scripts were all too 'contrived', boring, irrelevant and unnatural for the characters- too brooding and deeply philosophical, which was as distracting as it was annoying. And Tarantino seems to have this arrogant assumption that we love his pretentious dialogues (and inner monologues) as much as he does. The character development was insufficient- primarily Uma's who is supposed to be such a deadly assassin yet there is little or no back story which validates this. It would have been invaluable to have included some earlier scenes with Uma as the warrior/assassin she proves ONCE (and only once) in the ridiculous Crazy 88 fight sequence- but that is a sequence which is unconvincing because watching her slice up 88 stupid bodyguards is boring. So, instead of having one of the slowest-paced movies I have ever watched, simply speed things up a little (such as that painfully slow animated O-Ren sequence and in other areas) and add in some assassin background on Uma. I enjoyed the fight scene of O-Rens personal bodyguard in Vol 1 and the all-too-short training scene in Vol 2 with the Kung Fu master, but that was not really showing Uma as this assassin, nor unbeatable swordmaster. In fact, probably my biggest pet peeve of the both KBs is the odd fact that neither film shows any real sword fighting or special combat scenes among the "master" assassins. There is plenty of "talk" throughout both films about sword fighting, etc, but ALL the scenes (except that long, repetitive, implausible fight scene with the 88s) involved quick sequences, usually in tight quarters. THINK ABOUT IT- all the people on her list were killed quickly and without any real martial arts!!! O-Ren, Elle, Green, and Bill all were killed by Kiddo (Uma) quickly and with hardly any sword play! Yes, there was a very brief sword fight with O-Ren... but with all the build-up of O-Ren's ability, I would have expected their sword fight to be 3x longer at least and more exciting- instead of spending 30 minutes watching Uma fighting 100s of stupid bodyguard ninjas, and all attacking her one at a time! This made no sense and for me, ruined the movie, since I would have expected all the villains on Uma's list to be killed in true martial arts combat scenes with SWORDS- since they spend both movies talking endlessly about Hattori Hanzo swords! In addition to O-Ren being killed easily with only a few swings of Uma's sword, Green is killed boringly inside her house (despite "talking" about scheduling a knife fight), Elle is killed AGAIN inside a small cramp house without even one swing of either of their Hanzo amazing swords- yawn, yawn. All the fights were more of a street brawl or cat fight than a kung fu battle. Why not go outside for a real fight?? And Budd was killed by Elle (not even by Uma- again boring!). Bill, the ultimate villain, is killed in seconds by Uma with a cool, but all too quick heart explosion trick... after the audience sits through yet another excruciatingly slow pontificating dialogue between them. In both films, there is nothing to validate how deadly and masterful a fighter Bill is!! Geez. All in all, KB is a film which had great potential, but a misguided director and writers/editors who gave the audience no real kung fu or sword fight scenes among the main characters and thus left us with never really seeing any impressive swordplay or hand to hand kung fu. Instead, we have a boring, unsatisfying film. A shame.