Blood, blood, and more blood. Plot?

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2004)

Literally obscene amount of be-heading and de-limbing. - A water-park of gore. Blood fountaining frequently. In some scenes, it is presented more stylistically. In other scenes, it is presented more realistically, with more disturbing effect. - Fewer fight scenes than I expected, but it would've been hard to cram more in without sacrificing the movie's balance. So this isn't really a criticism, just a comment. - Little plot, but you should've been warned not to expect that out of this movie.

An action movie makes up for its rudimentary plot with amazing fight sequences, colorful characters, and occasional comedy. This movie hits in spots, but falls a little short overall. The fight sequences are okay, but nothing that hasn't been done before, and better, in a thousand Hong Kong Kung Fu movies twenty years ago. Uma's wire work is particularly sketchy, although it's a shame that I have to say that because I've seen what somebody looks like the first time on a wire, and to even get to the point she did must have required a lot of practice. She's also much sloppier with a sword than a super-assassin ought to be.
"Kill Bill" is supposed to be Tarantino's homage to the kung-fu flicks he loved as a kid, and homage it is--with all the good and bad that the word implies. There are times in the movie when it's obvious that a particular element was thrown in just because it's expected by the genre. An example is when, in the middle of a fight scene, Uma leaps/flies onto a second-floor balcony, a la Crouching Tiger. Using wires to "float" a character is a classic Hong Kong effect, but for some reason, in "Kill Bill", it feels like it was stuck in just for that reason: it's a classic Hong Kong effect, this is an homage, so it has to be in there somewhere. It's kind of cool to see Uma Thurman doing these effects instead of Michelle Yao or some other Asian actress that we've never heard of, but it's obvious that she's out of her element in some of the stunts.
"Kill Bill" has a lot of gore. It has more gore than it needs to. Tarantino is obviously trying to create some effect in his audience. I was a little turned off by it, frankly. You can take excessive gore a number of ways. You can do it cartooney, like "Friday the 13th," in which case it loses some of its impact. You can do it ultra-realistic, like "Natural Born Killers," or "Saving Private Ryan," in which case it has a strong impact that hopefully ties into a plot or some point that the film maker is trying to make that justifies the violence. But in "Kill Bill", Tarantino presents in-your-face, over-the-top, fountains-of-blood violence without a strong plot or point to back it up. It seemed juvenile to me.
There are a few good scenes in "Kill Bill". The fight between Uma and Lucy Liu's bodyguard (the female with the spiked ball on a chain) is pretty well-choreographed and executed. The fight between Uma and Lucy Liu is less physical and more psychological and mental, but still strong--right up until the end when *SPOILER DELETED*. Eww. There's another great moment when, after killing hundreds of his co-henchmen, Uma hacks sections off of the last henchman's sword while he cowers. He drops the decapitated hilt and holds up his hands, upon which she puts him over her knee, then spanks him with the flat of her blade, saying, "This is what you get for playing with Yakuza! Now go home to your mother!" The sheriff who refers to his deputy as, "Son Number One" (presumably it's really his son) and who has a row of spare sunglasses on his dash board is a great character even though he's only on-screen for five minutes in the whole movie.
"Kill Bill" is punctuated with clever or entertaining moments, but overall, I'd say it's a rental. Definitely not a must-see.