MIA: Quentin's sense of humor, pacing, dialogue...

Rating: 7/10 (13 October 2003)

Throughout this long, relentless contest of wills with his audience, Quentin still displays flashes of skill.
But it feels like he's been out of the game so long he isn't even going to try to compete with the edgy movies of the last few years, and retreats headlong into the 70s ethos he knows so well instead.
As a Hong-Kong splatter flick, it's too long and emotional, with a few good scenes stranded in otherwise lackluster writing and directorial choices, coming up well short of the genre's best. As a witty Tarantino neo-noir, it's *too* gory to be chilling or effective, too straightforward to be really clever or engaging, too monotonous to impress an audience with Matrixes and Ring-quests fresh in their minds.
Simply put, 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction' (and even 'Jackie Brown') *resembled* classic noirish gangster movies, but were actually *much better* than the source movies that inspired them.
Sadly, Quentin may now be far gone enough to want to pay such loving tribute to the 70sploitation era that he will completely hide his talent to create a *true* b-movie, one that hits every note so (im)perfectly it's just as forgettable, meaningless, and poorly assembled, as the movies to which he's paying homage.
I'll reserve final judgment until Vol. 2 comes out, but until then, I'd only recommend this one to indiscriminate fans of action movies and bad, really bad, 70s fare.