Will someone kill Quentin now, please?

Rating: 4/10 (5 July 2007)

OK, I don't really want Quentin Tarantino to be killed - actually, I am a big fan of his earlier films. But the 'Kill Bill' films are not in their league, all style and no substance. Volume 1 at least had a fast pace, its innovations coming quick and fast; but Volume 2 of this over-long project seems to add nothing new except for a layer of emotional interpretation that its grotesque, cartoonish characters can scarcely sustain. Volume 1 pastiched a huge range of different styles of film; Volume 2, at times, appears simply as a pastiche of a bad movie (and very hard to distinguish from a genuinely bad film to boot). Yet I can't help but feel that within these two movies (originally conceived as one very long film) there's a highly original shorter film that should have been made. When the saga ends with a credits sequence in which Tarantino appears to pay homage to himself, one can't help but wonder whether even the most talented of individuals don't sometimes benefit when someone else has the final cut.