too simple and repetitive

Rating: 5/10 (18 January 2004)

I went with my girlfriend so all the time I was worried about what she thought of it (especially as she kept telling me what she thought of it), maybe I'd have enjoyed it more without that worry.
Even so, I think it was too simple. It was just fight after fight. There was no sub plot. In most films when a key piece of action is over you go to a different story for a while, for a rest. In this when a fight was over they just stared at each other for a bit with music playing and then the next fight started. So there was only one story and it was a very thin one. The Bride kills lots of people in revenge. That's it, that's the entire story. There's no suspense, you know who'll win the fight. It's not like Nightmare on Elm St et al where the interest is in seeing people die in lots of different imaginative ways. There is only one way, they are killed with a sword. That's it. 110 mins of people being killed with swords in virtually the same way over and over. It is extremely violent but to counteract that he keeps reminding you that it's not real by going into cartoon or black and white, which makes it even less involving, more like watching a pop video. Reservoir Dogs was great because of all the talk, the violence wasn't what it was about. This had very little dialog. He was making a Hollywood version of a Japanese Samurai film. But most of the dialog was in Japanese anyway so why bother. It wasn't even high budget so it was just like seeing the films it was a homage to. On the good side, it reminded me of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Taking its time, lots of atmosphere and style but you could have walked out after 15 mins and walked back in 15 mins before the end and you wouldn't have missed anything.