What Plot?

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2004)

Oh yeah, its about revenge.
Negative comments about this movie seem to pertain to there being a lack of plot and dialogue. Some critics think that the film is incomplete. Everything about it, however, is intentional. Less dialogue gives more time to action, the plot is simplistic on purpose, and the movie may be seen as incomplete, because it is the first half of a two-part story.

The film reminded me more of Lock Stock and Two Smokin' Barrels than Pulp Fiction. But, then again, Barrels reminded me a bit of Pulp Fiction when I first saw it. At its worst Kill Bill Vol. 1 is Matrixy, with its huge fight scene involving The Bride(Uma Thurman) against the countless foes of the Crazy 88. At its best, Kill Bill is a fantastic action packed movie that takes on the look and feel of Japanese Anime(and there is even a short section that is animated).

The fight scene pitting The Bride against O-Ren Ishii looks like a state of the art fighting game on the XBox gaming console. So much style and pop-culture references arise throughout that I don't know if this is on purpose or not. Tarantino keeps the movie in its own world where Japanese steel is used to make a sword that is the ultimate weapon. The world is similar to ours in the 21st century, but it follows different guidelines. We see guns used, but only in certain situations. The sword is the honorably weapon of choice.

Thurman, Liu and crew do a great job at doing what they are suppose to do, which is: look tough, act cool, seem passionate about what's going on, and be beautiful.