QT, why oh why couldn't you have made this one movie?

Rating: 8/10 (12 October 2003)

I'm not entirely sure if the decision to split "Kill Bill" up into two parts was artistic or financial, but whatever the cause, the fact that "volume 1" is only half the story quickly demolishes any hope for an epic QT Asian trash-action film homage. Instead, viewers are left hanging until 2004(!), and that's not conducive to good cinema.
What's here is mostly great. Uma Thurman turns in an inspired performance as an avenging angel of death, and the many fights are pleasing and gory as all hell, though not quite up to the standard of movies like "The Hidden Fortress" or even QT's inspiration, "Kage no Gundan". The soundtrack and visual style ooze cool, but one senses QT has lost some of his creative steam somewhere after the gigantic "Crazy 88" fight - after all, there's only so much that can be done with samurai swords. Give us some guns, Quentin!
The anime sequence explaining O-Ren is beautiful and well done, but some of the other gore effects don't work quite as well. The problem here is that QT decided to put much of the main fight in black and white for the American release (reason is still unknown - perhaps U.S. audiences can't handle gore?). When gallons of blood are lovingly crafted to splatter onscreen, the viewer almost aches to see them in vivid color...
The casting of Lucy Liu was a huge mistake, and the Charlie's Angel still hasn't learned how to act. Vivica Fox is basically tossed aside after the first sequence, though hopefully her snappy character will return in the second movie. The trademark time shifting works well, as do some original camera angle flourishes, but it's not enough to make "Kill Bill" a classic. Overall, the first half of the fourth movie by QT ends up being an 8/10.