Pure...

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2003)

As a dedicated life-long zealous aficianado of all genres of HK cinema I went to this movie strictly for the novelty of seeing Gordon Liu in a Hollywood movie--he's a martial-arts movie demi-god. Having Sonny Chiba along was nice too. Plus Tarantino is also an HK action movies fan so I guess that's nice too. However I am not a big fan of his work--I was mixed on Pulp Fiction.
Right after watching Kill Bill I though OK, it's pretty much an action flick with zero plot on a big budget; pretty bad acting (Lucy Liu is a laughably bad actress with zero screen presence); a solid soundtrack; nice sound effects; and unusually large amounts of blood and mayhem. The anime addition was a nice touch too. And certainly he is paying homeage to several action genres -- with mixed success. But his parodying and homages (to Japanese and HK cinema) are somewhat difficult to differentiate.
Yuen's action and fighting sequences are good, (Uma was stunt-doubled quite well) but as typical with his Hollywood work, fairly simple and much watered down.
So OK, 6.5 out of 10 with an extra half point for having Yuen Woo Ping and Gordon Liu, plus a nice fight scene with Chiaki Kuriyama. 7/10.

But wait...
After thinking about it, I started to realize that when one looks a bit deeper one finds this all very deeply disturbing--this is a new level extreme violence and brutality. But there is zero cost. 100% gratuitous. All entertainment. No suffering, no crying, weeping or wailing. Extreme violence and brutality with no cost is a sick concept, but one all too common of many aspects of American culture.
Looking at yet another level one also finds this movie riddled with racist and deeply bigoted messages on many levels. Uma Thurman is Tarantino's aryan goddess who can take on hundreds of Japanese fighters with only a few scratches, an African-american assassin, and a Chinese/Japansese assassin. She is just so superior. All the tired old standard bigotry against Texas/southerners is present as well. The point where she spanks the one remaining sword fighter was the coup de gras.
This is a disturbing and pointless exercise is racism, bigotry and gratuitous violence created by a little white American boy who has a lot to learn. This is absolute rubbish in every sense of the word.