Kill Quentin... Please!

Rating: 1/10 (12 October 2003)

It takes 6 years to come up with THIS? A plotless piece of crap, with non-existent characters, dialogue which is embarrassingly bad (WHY do people still think that QT is a great writer because he uses the f-word as often as possible in his dialogue???), no drive, no tension, only TWO fight scenes, none of which is anything special - the first Uma Thurman/Vivica Fox is a weak rethread of countless superior indoor catfights from Hong Kong B-movies circa 1990 (pick up almost any Moon Lee/Yukari Oshima film and you'll know what I'm talking about), the second is a long slash-fest featuring a lot of black-and-white gore (WHY? it's not like the source movies were in black-and-white) but which once again has no build-up, no excitement outside of shock value (see Uma rip an eyeball out!). The wirework is extremely shoddy (unless that's another deliberate homage of course), no one impresses with any move (not even Liu Chia Hui), Uma is clearly doubled a lot, and there is simply not a single 'wow'-moment martial arts-wise (fans of dismemberment will enjoy the scene, though). Why Yuen Wo-Ping was needed here beats me - any American choreographer who had watched enough early seventies samurai and kung fu films could have put these fights together. And how anyone can talk about an adrenaline-drenched ride when you get only two action set-pieces beats me - especially since the rest of the film has nothing to offer except 'look at how clever I am'-homage ripoffs and (admittedly) a fun soundtrack. When I read the ecstatic reviews this films has gotten I get the impression people are talking about the film they wanted to have seen rather than the film they saw. Moreover, the action quotient in part 2 will be even less than in part 1 - so here's a new theory on why the film was cut into two halves: it's just too damn boring to watch in one go!