Utter crap.

Rating: 1/10 (28 November 2003)

In simplest terms, this movie was garbage. I tried my hardest to even enjoy it, but found myself bored to tears. Face it, people--it's a poorly assembled collection of trite, recycled elements, and not even done all that well. THE MATRIX (the original film, mind you, not its ho-hum sequels) set a new standard in action films, and this film flops.
The character development is nonexistent, there's only the narrowest shred of a plot, and the characters themselves are uninspiring caricatures of themselves. The dialogues is stilted and oh-so-awfully delivered that it's painful to watch. On top of all of that, I can't find this "style" that everyone keeps harping about--what's so stylish about the random insertion of an anime segment (that looks, by the way, about as classy as a high school kid's doodle in the back of his math notebook), a black and white segment, or the "silhouette" fighting segment that is about as subtle as a tracheotomy? I found myself particularly annoyed by the plethora of hideous titles that continuously punctuate the film, all of which look like they were generated using secondhand chracter generators manufactured in the late 1970's. (Just as an aside, I don't think the same font was used twice. Classy, I tell you.)
The fact of the matter is that Tarantino doesn't have the juice he needs to make this piece of detritus exciting in any other way. Unfortunately he fails entirely--his trite, supposedly "stylish" effects come across as pompous and tedious.
Those who praise this film--fine, they're entitled to their own opinions, but in all likelihood they are the same people who thought 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS was "high cinema."
Normally I make fun of movies that turn out to be bad, but this made me wish that I was having my teeth pulled. I sure hope that it was intended to be a parody, but the worst part is that I can't tell either way. Its farcical elements are blatant and plentiful; for instance, the countless Monty Python-esque sprays of "blood" do nothing but prompt the audience as to when to laugh hysterically. My gut feeling, though, tells me that Tarantino sees this as "the real thing." How sad for us all.
Skip this film. It's a waste. You'd be better off renting something that actually manages to entertain at the same time.