Is Tarantino losing his edge?

Rating: 5/10 (9 November 2003)

A cocktail with too many ingredients
First of all this review contains SPOILERS. Ok? Right, let's move on..
I saw KBV1 last night, and I have to say I don't think it works as a contemporary piece of cinema. Fans of this movie will almost certainly say the reason I don't like Tarantino's 4th film is because I don't get it. However, I'd argue those people who say they do get it, don't get why it fails. But before anybody starts thinking, yeah but you've not seen this movie or that movie, let me give you an analogy.
You know how every so often games developers try to blend together several genres into one video game? They'll take the platform action of Super Mario, the fighting of Tekken, the gun-play of Devil May Cry, and add the aerial combat of G-Police and the driving of Gran Turismo, then dress it up like a Star Trek game and attempt to give it the atmosphere of Resident Evil? It doesn't work does it? For one reason or another it will fail; that's how I see Kill Bill.
The film hops from one style to another and doesn't settle down until the conclusion in the Blue Leaves restaurant, by which point the tension and mood built up at the very beginning of the movie has been evaporated by the lack of consistency. It's a shame, because at first it does feel as distressing and unsettling as such legendary revenge movies as `I Spit on Your Grave' and `Bais-Moi'.
Tarantino is famous for jumbling up the sequence of events in his films, but unlike Pulp Fiction (in which the non-sequential story telling ultimately fits together like a jigsaw puzzle) Kill Bill feels like the back story is tacked on in a vain attempt to add depth to characters whose only aim is to kill or pervert others. The result is that like a video game that tries to mimic several of its peers at once, the set pieces in Kill Bill feel disconnected from one another, and more like Tarantino was desperate to tip the wink at as many Hong Kong and Japanese classics as possible. To have one piece of back story told in B&W, another in colour, and another as an anime means the movie feels like it has no identity. However, it is possible to blend different cinematic styles and have it work. The original `Matrix' for example managed to blend film noir with sci-fi, gun-play and kung-fu excellently, because each had its place and purpose in the story (shame the sequels failed to achieve this). In the end movie had its own identity, despite the fact that, like Kill Bill, its list of influences is as long as your arm.
However, Kill Bill's biggest failing is that by showing The Bride kill the second person on her death list first, then going back and spending the rest of the movie telling you about the assassination first person (Oren Ishii) means the latter half of the film has no dramatic impact. Sure, you already know The Bride is going to survive the battle in the Blues Leaves restaurant because `Kill Bill Vol 2' is out in about six months, but to be shown a character is intact and no worse for wear BEFORE their big battle just means what's supposed to be the climax of a movie has no punch. The positive conclusion outweighs the drama of the events leading up to it. Why do you think sports fans don't like to hear the final score before they watch the match? Because if you know how it's going to turn out the highs and lows of the event lose their impact.
The fight in the Blues Leaves wasn't all that interesting anyway. Like the stupid fight scene in `Matrix Reloaded', where Neo fights scores of Agent Smith, seeing The Bride fight all eighty-eight members of the Crazy 88 isn't very interesting because the number of opponents makes the scene too cluttered. The choreography might be superb, but there's too much going off for you to appreciate it. The scene would have looked better and worked better psychologically if it had involved fewer opponents, people can imagine fighting off a dozen opponents at once, but not the better part of a hundred. Check out the fight in the playground in Jackie Chan's `Police Story 2' if you want to see a fight with one-person-against-many done effectively.
**ENDING SPOILER** However I will be going to see Volume 2, but only because the cliff-hanger: the Bride's unborn daughter surviving her mother's coma. I have to say, though, even that's like something from Sunset Beach. If Volume 1 hadn't ended with that revelation, something for the audience to wonder `What's the Bride going to do when she finds out about that', I'd have no interest in seeing part two at all.
In all honesty I think the best thing about the whole movie is the signature track, `Battle without Honour or Humanity' by Tomoyasu Hotei.
5/10