Kill Miramax--A Movie Like This Would be Best Served Whole

Rating: 8/10 (13 October 2003)

Here's my major problem with QT's long awaited "Kill Bill." While the film is always interesting from a movie buff's perspective (a QT film always is even when you end up hating it in the end), it doesn't get really interesting until the last thirty minutes (which are wildly entertaining) when Uma (stunningly beautiful and vicious as the revenge fueled blood lusting Black Mamba/The Bride) and the action move to Tokyo. So in my mind, even if all of Volume II (to be released in February of 2004) is as entertaining as the last thirty minutes of Volume I, why in the world didn't the hire an intelligent editor who could've easily chopped out some drawn out exposition (does a B-level revenge fantasy really need an hour and twenty minutes of exposition?) and delivered us an all out go-for-broke extravaganza of over-the-top violence and action in one two and a half to three hour volume? The only answer I can come up with is that Miramax is greedy and QT is full of himself. He thinks every cool idea (and he has some really cool ones here from the retro opening credits to the battle to the death in a Japanese garden snow-globe at the end) that pops in his head needs to be filmed, and every spec of film he captures needs to be in the movie.
All these things aside, "Kill Bill" is pretty fun if you like gruesome cartoonish violence, a simple plot line (revenge is a dish best served cold), compelling visuals (I didn't care for the anime sequence, but found my jaw drop at the stunningly beautiful cinematography and set design in the Tokyo sequences), non-linear story-telling, and an ultra hip soundtrack. This really just is a fetish film for fans of kung-fu flicks, death wish fantasies, and spaghetti westerns, and there ain't nothing wrong with that as long as you realize that's what this is. The casual movie-goer will probably be dumbfounded, as the film is virtually void of the trademark QT dialogue which is what I think made the over-rated "Pulp Fiction" so oddly endearing to mainstream audiences. I ultimately plan to see Volume II when it comes out, because I finally would like to see Uma Thurman Kill Bill. Until then, our bloodlust will have to be satisfied by this mixed-bag of cinematic tricks.