Tarantino matches Leone

Rating: Null/10 (13 October 2003)

Well, he's halfway there, anyway. Only the release of Volume 2 will show whether-what am I talking about, of course Volume 2 will be amazing. Anybody who doesn't think so should have their head examined.
Kill Bill is quite simply the greatest action movie of this or maybe any other generation. It elevates trash to art, and then elevates art to trash, turning over everything we thought we knew about film, action, kung fu, exploitation, and Quentin Tarantino. Actually, it confirms what we already knew about Quentin Tarantino, but who would have thought that such a movie was possible?
For the one person who doesn't already know the story, Bill and his cronies take out Uma Thurman's wedding party, she survives, and she's out for revenge. But really, that's besides the point. Revenge is the vehicle for Tarantino to throw more stylistic flourishes and homages on the screen than any other movie since Tarantino's last movie. It may take several years before serious film scholars can finally lock down just how many references occur in this film, although film is so deeply built into Tarantino's subconscious that we may never know how much this movie owes to everything from the Spaghetti Westerns to the films of Sonny Chiba and Bruce Lee.

The action sequences are the best ever filmed. Period. Never have technical expertise and pure artistry intersected so beautifully as in these sequences. After a summer in which audiences were bombarded to no end with mindless car chases and banal shootouts, Kill Bill offers massive, stunningly choreographed fight sequences that never miss a beat. Tarantino manages to keep the pure exhilaration of his film at fever pitch until the false ending, intended to raise expectations for Volume 2 but succeeding only at reminding me of the epic that could have been. But if half of the greatest action movie ever made isn't enough to get you to slap down seven bucks, then you must really hate movies.
My subject heading was in reference to an article I actually read on this website, in which Tarantino said that he would not be satisfied with his career until he created a scene that matched the raw power of the final showdown in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I don't know if he quite matched it in Volume 1, although in several moments which I will allow you to find he came awfully close. If he doesn't match it in Volume 2, no scratch that, if he doesn't blow the final scene of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly out of the water in Volume 2, I may just be disappointed. But Tarantino is not one to disappoint.