An extremely flawed film

Rating: Null/10 (18 October 2003)

WARNING: HEAVY SPOILERS
Let me begin by stating the positive aspects of the film. The gore, the cinematography, the anime sequence, and the Tarantinoesque style make Kill Bill Vol. 1 an enjoyable experience
However, the dialogue is utterly laughably (not in the good tongue-in-cheek way it was intended): "Even Steven" "I'm Buck and I come to f***" "Silly Rabbit Trix are for Kids"...Are these supposed to be great quotes? This pales in comparison to the dialogue Tarantino is known for. This especially sad because kung fu dialogue can be so deliciously cheesy, yet here it's just sad.
Lucy Liu is not a good actress. Her monologue after decapitating the Japanese racialist in her clan was a cheap attempt at understatement and situational irony. Lucy Liu is also crosseyed. So why are there so many closeups of her face?
Uma Thurman did not do any notable kung fu moves. the wire wasn't very well done because you can tell exactly when the wire begins to influence movement. This resembles the bad wirework of The Tuxedo. I cringed at every time Uma Thurman tried to sound tough.
The "Move your Big Toe" was pointless. It seemed to last forever. It is also a huge plothole that she would have been able to camp out in the car of Buck who she just killed for that long without being discovered by the police. That's ridiculously implausible and reeks of lazy writing. Staring at Uma Thurman's crooked and badly manicured toes for 10 minutes is also beyond excessive. This should have been cut.
Kill Bill is packed with plot holes. Uma Thurman driving the P*ssy Wagon, the car of a man she just slaughtered without being discovered by the police is one example. Yeah right. You know, HARDWORKING writers would have organized the script in a manner where such obvious holes would have been avoided. Sorry, but Tarantino telling the public ahead of time that Kill Bill takes place "in a parallel universe where police doesn't exist" is a cheap tactic. You might as well start giving excuses for plot holes in other movies. And don't start telling me that it's a Kung Fu parody and is not supposed to be taken seriously because if it were just another kung fu parody, then it wouldn't be getting 4 out of 4s on so many film forums. Kill Bill isn't Kung Pow. It doesn't deserve these sort of plot holes nor will it get away with the screenwriter's cheap Entertainment Tonight-crap press releases.
Kill Bill Vol. 1 suffers from a lack of exposition: okay what do we know about the Bride? She was beaten up pretty badly and killed. That's all we know. This makes it impossible to cheer her on as she dismembers her former colleagues. Tarantino also insists on making the baddies as "cool" and idiosyncratically appealing as possible. So we are left watching the movie saying "cool there's so much blood and guts" but we don't get the rush of empathic energy that we got with movies like Payback and Taxi Driver.

Tarantino's tired nonlinear screenplay is a major flaw. At first I thought that Uma kills Vivica A. Fox first. Today my friend informed me that the Fox-slaying takes place after Uma's scalping of Lucy Liu as indicated by her stupidly superfluous notepad (*sigh*). If her notepad had not been there to inform us of Tarantino's oh so brilliant storytelling style we would have NEVER KNOWN that her murder of Vivica A. Fox takes place after her trip to Japan. In fact it makes more sense to have had her kill Fox first. Why go to Japan and deal with the Yakuza right after being released when you can just go to Fox's house in the United States. Uma goes to Japan and comes back and is STILL DRIVING THE P*SSY WAGON? give me a break. This nonlinear style serves no purpose at all other than to give an excuse for Tarantino's obsession with keeping the Bride's history out of the first half of the Kill Bill movies.
The Black and White shift during the Crazy 88 fight scene was not needed. Is there any point to this, or is Quentin just trying to make his film look more artsy (something it definitely IS NOT)? The film's major asset is the gore, therefore it is unreasonable to cut down on almost 50% of the film's potential gore.
There is no mention of the Bride's possible venereal diseases after being raped repeatedly by various urchins while she was in a coma. for all we know she could be HIV +. This would have made us SYMPATHIZE and cheer for Uma's character. It would have also made the film realistic and proven to be a huge step in the portrayal of the HIV in film.
Quentin Tarantino is plagued by culture confusion syndrome. Sorry but anyone who knows anything about the histories and cultures of China and Japan knows that they have almost nothing to do with each other culturally. Tarantino's blending of the samurai film with the kung fu film seems very racist (unintentionally) and ignorant. I guess since they both have slant eyes than they must both be sort of similar right? Wrong! This was really offensive. The Yakuza would NEVER nominate a Chinese-blood as a leader. They (and the entire country of Japan) are known for being racialists.
The time of the split seemed like the middle of a long metrage. This is not a good time for a split. I felt cheated. I have to pay twice to see one film? I'm sure we could have cut many of the scenes but Tarantino was probably too persistent. Weinstein made the wise financial decision that the film would flop if released as a 3 hour film but would make much more than expected if split released TWICE. I can't blame him. Filmmaking is a business and they want their money, but this is setting a precedent for all potentially long films. The moment of the split was not wisely chosen. Perhaps no moment would have been suitable as the splitting point because the film was not initially conceived as a two-volume feature. It reeks of cash-grabbing consumer-duping though. The marketing campaign for Kill Bill proved to be extremely disgusting as well. Only two other people in the theater knew that it was only half a movie. Kill Bill Vol. 1 was advertised as Kill Bill. It's so nice when those filmmakers trick consumers out of their money isn't it?

Bottom line: Kill Bill Vol. 1 would have been NOTHING without the gore. The gore made the film and will establish its legacy. I had a good time despite the negatives therefore I would give Kill Bill a fresh. Tarantino has run out of ideas and is getting indolent with screenwriting, therefore he is relying on spoofing films to create his films. He peaked too early with Pulp Fiction and he does not have much to prove anymore. He's just another guy trying to add more to his pile of dough. See Kill Bill if you like cartoonish violence and pizazz. Avoid it if you don't.