This film is a frenetic, plotless and overly long mess

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2003)

In return for dragging along my best friend to Matrix Revolutions on Monday, I went with him to see Kill Bill yesterday.
I'll admit, I wasn't keen on going; I had expectations of bad filmmaking and low-rent garbage on the menu, since Tarantino was at the helm of this particular project.
But the film I saw was even worse than I had anticipated. Kill Bill is typical Tarantino TRASH, and pretty much without any merit as a piece of cinema.
For starters, it has NO plot. The story is so lame that I find it difficult to believe that it would satisfy ANYONE whose age counts to double figures. Concurrently, I shall skip discussing the 'story', for obvious reasons.
The acting - WHAT acting? What acting are we talking about? The only role given any kind of decent screentime was the part brutally played by Thurman. I don't know, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh - Thurman being a Hollywood star rather than an REAL actress, perhaps it's a little unfair to expect some kind of meritable acting from her? Yes? No? Whatever - either way she delivers a lazy and one-dimensional performance throughout.
Of course, her conspicuous lack of real talent isn't the only reason her part seemed like a cardboard cutout. There's the fact that she plays a stick-thin character - it has NO depth, no backstory, nothing to help you form any kind of attachment with her. She's basically a zombie prototype who delivers her dreadful lines straight from the lousy script with mundane predictability.
And to think that she has the MOST developed character in the film! Everyone else - well, they were nothing more than extras wheeled in from the Hollywood crowd who've yet to hit the big time. There really is no point in discussing their contributions, because, chances are the slipshod props and the poorly designed scenery furniture add more to the film than them. And not just because they have the substantial advantage of not having to reiterate the childish script.
Again, perhaps I'm being too harsh? I mean, what can one seriously expect from a script that reads like it was written by an over-ambitious seven year-old? As ever, Tarantino gives us a screenplay that lacks ANY real depth or talent, but instead gets by on cheap gags and contemporary slang, all dressed up in the guise of "Cool". Much like the similarly fatally flawed Pulp Fiction script, the lines themselves are moronic and without meaning in the extreme, but people en masse try to force themselves to like them because "they're cool."
I'm sorry to say, but just having a "cool" script doesn't mean it's a GOOD script. It is certainly poorly-written and fails to generate any real kind of emotion: no humour, no comedy, no meaning in the slight. It fails to educate, it fails to move. It is just BAD. That means that ANY actor would struggle to deliver a performance that is even half watchable. And the fact that there is NO plot, and only ONE character with more than 15 minutes of screen time only compounds to what we knew all along; to the inevitable conclusion that as before, a Tarantino flick is merely a tyre-worn vehicle for over-the-top and pointless gore and low-rent, throw-away lines.
As for the 'action' in the film, the fights are dubious at best, and sadly the choreographer (who is also responsible for the lauded martial arts in the Matrix trilogy and the mighty Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has obviously grown exceedingly LAZY in his old age. Time he collected his pension, methinks. Much like the hack (sorry, director) of this regrettable excuse for a film.
Too long has the overrated HACK that is Quentin Tarantino survived off the ill-gained reputation as a real director and someone who knows how to put together a decent film. It's time he - and his mindless army of fans - woke up to the fact that he knows less about filmmaking than that other HACK responsible for the Star Wars flicks.
In conclusion, what do we have with the first Volume of Kill Bill? A film without a plot, a one pony (sorry, character) led narrative, NO credible performances, a predictably diabolic script, lazy cinematography (thought the snowy garden scene at the end wasn't too bad), a typically out-of-place score, some lame sequence of animation midway, over-long and boring fight sequences (in fact the last 40 minutes comprised totally of one long fight, apart from the laughably conspicuous CG plane) and a film with no conclusion or denouement. There really is NOTHING going for this film, certainly nothing cinematically. But people pretend to like it because it's a Tarantino flick, and because it's "Cool."
Please, get a grip. This film is a frenetic, plotless and overly long mess - a real train wreck of modern day cinema which makes Kangaroo Jack look a masterpiece.
Tarantino is still a HACK, never a proper director, and he's a total idiot to boot. If I were to rate this on this site, I'd give it a 1/10, which again begs the option to rate films (like this) a naught out of ten - a score of one is far too generous for a pile of trash like this. Avoid at all costs.