90 minutes too long

Rating: 4/10 (23 October 2003)

The fights are truly excellent (if you happen to dig near-realistic, ultra-violent, gore-packed screen fighting with some tasteful stylistic effects), as are the parts directly preceding the fights and the whole beginning of the movie. All in all, about 20-25 minutes.
The rest of the 111 minutes consists of some lousy humor and a lot of dragging scenes as a result of awesomely bad scripting, naturally iced with Tarantino's trademarks, chapters and non-linear timeline (this time actually adding very little to the film besides the nice beginning). Animation episode is a very nice touch, but terribly realized (unimaginatively clichéd & ugly art).
Most of the casting is quite satisfactory, with few excellent choices and a highly average lead. Although Uma Thurman handles the action parts very well, she just lacks the edge and presence to be anywhere near believable in her ample bravado, thus underlining the B-movie feeling of this film in an unfavorable way -- a truly charismatic lead might have been able to make the (purposefully) corny lines both hilarious and impressive, but her efforts fall flat.
If you want to see ultra-violent fighting and enough blood to engulf Tokyo, watch Shogun Assassin or any other movie Tarantino (tastefully) has taken his inspiration from. The plentiful mediocre and plain bad aspects of this film easily counter and knock out the worthy fighting moments (although you might want to check them out on some medium that allows you to skip right to the beef).