Poetical violence

Rating: 7/10 (14 November 2003)

This is a well made movie (which is not necessarily the same thing as a good movie). In fact this movie is very well directed by Tarantino's usual iron hand in a succession of violent scenes some of them curiously impregnated by a poetical atmosphere revealed not only in the scenery that frames them but also by the excellent music and songs conveyed by the sound track which at times has moments of great lyricism. Most sequences pay visual tribute to Japanese cartoons and the movie contains itself some sequences made up actually by cartoons in that style. If we take for granted the usually unplausible scenes in this kind of movies (e. g. the heroin coming of a coma and recovering almost at once all her physical fighting strength) we'll appreciate the firm way by which this movie is made and will become fascinated by its exciting atmosphere. There is a small flaw in the plot consisting in the lack of a quite understandable explanation for the attempted killing of the heroin at her wedding ceremony as well as for the actual killing of all the other people there. Since she was herself a killer maybe it was a squaring of accounts within the gang. Anyway this detail is not very important. Well some people might say that this movie purports a lot of gratuitous violence. Yes this may be true but if we read the daily papers or watch TV news bulletins don't we hear about lots of this kind of violence performed everyday in real life? Hasn't someone already said that mankind is creating a society of monsters with its consumerist values? Do these movies impel people towards crime and violence more than society does or on the contrary they arouse in most people a strong aversion for violent behaviour? This is a vexed question for psychologists and sociologists to solve. Anyway personally I'm against all forms of violence and I never said this was or wasn't a good movie. But I reaffirm that in pure formal terms (disregarding its content) it's a well made movie. And one more remarkable feature: this is a feminist movie in a certain sense. In fact I can't remember seeing a violent movie where women's roles are so much more important than men's like in this one.