As brilliant and subtle as it is pulpy and visceral

Rating: 10/10 (20 October 2003)

I've noticed that many people, even those who loved the film, have said that this film is "just" an homage to grindhouse films, and is the celebration of style over substance. While agreeing that the style of the film is so breathtakingly original as to potentially overshadow the substance, I believe the idea that there is no substance to this film is gravely mistaken. When I watched it, I saw archetypal images and themes filtered through an imagination with a real understanding of the zeitgeist of our culture, creating an entirely new perspective on ancient, even primeval issues. I saw a story--simple on the surface--in which women rebel against their sexual oppression by men (almost every man seems to want sex with a main character--the rapist, Boss Matsumoto, the goofy guy in the bar with Go Go) and every one of them who does is subsequently brutally, killed. Go Go's line, "Do you still want to penetrate me? Or is it I...who have penetrated you?" encapsulates this them with typical Tarantino economy and style. I see a story of lost innocence...every young character witnesses a horrible act of violence, and the question is perpetually asked: "how will they deal with it?" I see a movie that exhibits the idea in our social consciousness that the world is shrinking, and the rise of Eastern ideas in our Western culture. I see an undercurrent of the immense repercussions when a great potential (The Bride's) is violently repressed, and then unleashed. I see a stylized mediation on the catharsis of violence, as well as a film with a deep understandings of the very real effects of that violence in the real world. And somehow...that thing that makes this film brilliant...it's supremely, unequivocally, immensely enjoyable to watch. It is a movie that tells us why it's okay that we love to see violence--brutal, visceral, bloody violence--in our art, even though we know that violence in the real world is a terrible, terrible thing. 10/10.