Welcome back Mr. Tarantino

Rating: 10/10 (13 October 2003)

It borrows heavily from A Fist Full of Dollars, The Matrix, Game of Death, Natural Born Killers, Taxi Driver, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and A Clockwork Orange. Quinton Tarantino manages to mix all of those films and about 200 more into concoction that will keep you flying high all night, then keep you double-over on the bathroom floor til the wee hours of the morning. All within a thirty-second timeframe, I was awed, sickened, elated and rolling with laughter.
While paying homage to these great films of others, he still draws heavily and distinctly from Quentin Tarantino's first, second and third films. Tarantino doesn't just break the rules, he rewrites them and then brakes them.
He showed Lucy Liu how to play a part in a real troop of specially trained female (well, mostly anyhow) operatives beholding to a somewhat anonymous male figure.
He proved that you could choreograph a fight scene in which dozens of people attacking a single one could be convincing even when the single one dispatches all of the others.
He was equally deft at portraying unabashed absurdity with frightening and rare realism.
He demonstrated that he is not a fluke, a Scorsese-wanna-be, or a one-trick pony. He's just about the best thing that's happened to movies since Jerry Lewis stopped making them.
And I REALLY liked the Japanese, all-girl rockabilly band.