A failure both as film and as parody.

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2003)

It's hard to believe that a Tarantino film with so many beautiful women, so much violence, blood, swearing could be so very very boring.
As if genuine camp was in short supply, Quentin Tarantino felt the need to manufacture camp in his latest retro-chic-martial-arts-satire saga, Kill Bill. His efforts are not successful, his goal is not noble, for if there is anything more pitiable than genuine camp it is counterfeit camp.
The film opens with promise-- a stark black and white closeup of a badly beaten Uma Thurman (who's character name was not made known at the press screening), ostensibly held at gunpoint by an assailant somewhere out of frame. The scene is well devised and builds tension, culminating in a moment of horrific violence, and indicates that there is an intense film experience to follow. What actually follows is a laughable slapstick nod to Hong Kong action cinema, to which Tarantino claims he owes everything.

I cannot use the term homage, for an homage does credit to its subject's fine points. This only debases the merits of Hong Kong cinema-- delivered with nil grace, shot with an eye for retro whose novelty has worn off long ago, the film moves at the pace of a sputtering race car. Lightning fast at points, painfully slow at others. It is clear that Tarantino means to drag us through the mud-- these lapses in pacing are no accident. It's unfortunate that his film builds to nothing. Even as an Austin Powers style parody, the film is weak-- not even a knowledge of Hong Kong action films can cultivate an interest in Tarantino's plot twists. To say the least, Tarantino has a funny way of paying his respects-- if I didn't know better, I'd swear he was cruelly mocking Hong Kong cinema.
There are a few bright spots, however. Uma awakes from her coma, only to find herself without the child she was bearing at the time of her assault. A twisted sexual assault follows, as does her swift revenge. The scene actually manages to be dramatic, and for a moment fools the viewer into thinking that the film may undergo a change of heart. Alack and alas.
A long anime vignette is certainly one of the high points in the film-- stunningly animated, these scenes are exciting, edgy and exhilerating, even though the departure from and return to live action is wholly unwarranted and seems to have been done simply for the sake of appealing to a wider base of high school underclassmen.
Watching Kill Bill, it is hard to remember that he ever made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, films that perfectly nailed the line between hard-as-nails crime flick stereotyping and substantive cinema. Both films were funny, hard hitting, powerful, and resonated long after the screen had faded out. But in Kill Bill, Tarantino simply aims to get a few chuckles out of the scads of frat boys that he knows will attend his film by the hundreds. A beheading here, more severed limbs than you could count, sprays of blood, Tarantino cannot clera the bar of his previous works, and it's a shame. Luckily, the film makes it clear that it is not to be taken seriously. If only it were entertaining enough to carry its own weight.