A clever person's stupid movie

Rating: 5/10 (12 May 2007)

The trademarks of Quentin Tarantino's movies are well known: smart dialogue; self-awareness of popular culture (from the banal to the arcane); cinematographic innovation; ultra-violence; and a pervading air of cool. After the runaway success of his first two movies, his third film 'Jackie Brown' traded some excess of these qualities for a bit of conventional characterisation: I liked the result, although hardcore fans were disappointed. But for his fourth film, Tarantino has moved in the opposite direction. 'Kill Bill', a homage to Asian martial-arts films, sees Tarantino at his most stylised, and is as stupid as its name. The wafer thin-plot sees a female assassin out to kill those who wronged her; and little happens except for an improbable sequence of slayings. The sad thing is that there are many little touches that delight in this movie, Tarantino has not lost his mastery of the art of film-making (at least, not in the detail); but devoid of any rational context, it adds up only to showing off with blood. While Uma Thurman, in the lead role, is wooden, failing to convey either human emotion or cartoon menace. What's really unforgivable, however, is that instead of dazzling us with a quick punch, Tarantino made a film so long that, in spite of its essential vacuity, it had to be split into two movies to make it a commercial proposition. And I'm really not sure I'll be bothering with volume two.