"Bang-bang, my baby shot me down".

Rating: 9/10 (29 September 2011)

When this movie was about to be released, I thought about the title - "Kill Bill" - and how weirdly cool it sounded, and how effective it was as a mission statement for Uma Thurman's character. Simple, to the point, and right on target - 'get the ba----rd who f----d me up'. Tarantino pays tribute to a wide array of his favorite influences in the picture, and it's a twist to see him in action parodying martial arts and spaghetti Western flicks of the Seventies with more gore and violence than either of those genres ever offered. Did you notice the cereal box that Copperhead Vernita (Vivica A. Fox) used to stealthily ambush The Bride (Thurman) in her kitchen? - it was Kaboom! How great was that?
Tarantino's all over the place with clever nuances like that, in fact he threw in not one, but two references to the Sixties TV cult classic 'Star Trek' with the opening tag line 'Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold', a favorite Klingon proverb, and later compared Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) to a female villain from ST. The passage of time only makes these references better for fans who grew up with the same affections as Tarantino himself.
Obviously "Kill Bill" won't appeal to everyone, but then again, what picture does. The caveat here would be the sheer violence, decapitations and bloodshed done in a matter of fact style, but oddly appropriate for the story. There's also a sick mentality attendant to the character of Buck and the creepiness of The Trucker in The Bride's hospital room, but without them, the pent up years of revenge wouldn't have been as sweet.
Of course, much of the story is just too fantastic to be believable, but that's probably beside the point. By going for an over the top sword fight at The House of Blue Leaves, the action justifies itself as relentless and vengeful, satisfying the viewer's desire to see The Bride get her due justice. If anything, Part II does even a better job of fulfilling that goal; together they rank as a couple of the best action revenge flicks ever.