# 117??

Rating: 1/10 (11 August 2004)

So sad that this awful, clumsy pastiche of clichÃ©s should generate so much sycophantsy in favour of that horrid little man Quentin Tarantino. This film has not even been out for five months and already it is at #117 on the list of IMDb top films of ALL TIME (!?!). If you want to watch a REAL Western as opposed to a facsimile of a Western, go and watch "ONce Upon a Time in the West" or even "The Searchers" again. Those films are difficult, trying, multiple meaning-generating masterworks. Those films still seems fresh, this one is tired and show-offy, without having a real sense of CiNeMa about it. "Pulp Fiction" (Tarantino's only good film in my opinion) is worthy, watch that again and tell me that this is not a vastly inferior work. Tarantino's cinema has always been plastic, self consciously fake, but at least Pulp-Fiction dares to have fun with its genre-bending tendencies. This film is merely a compendium of spot-the-film-references, with a couple of snide, jokey one liners to compensate. It is a fashion magazine-like tour through the landscape of the Western and other less respectable genres (as observed in terms of the 'centre', that dreary institution known as the AFI).
Granted, it is nice to see interest generated in older and less-known genres by younger generations, but all this does is to highlight how much better those films are and how intellectually bankrupt endeavours like this are. It is for this film to be informed by the history of cinema, but not for it to merely lift from that past willy-nilly without adding a iota of insight or critical meta-commentary of his own. QT, in my opinion, is a brat who deserves a spanking with a large wooden paddle. He may embody the Northern Californian ideal; a proud loudmouth, not coy about much, self consciously playing a role to his adoring fans, a natural entertainer, the grand high poo-bah of all film nerds (or "cineastes", whichever is preferable). That would be fine, if the films were any good. They're not (beyond "Pulp Fiction" which, as I have stated, is an unqualified masterpiece). There is a lot of myth-generating riding on the quality of that ONE film. Unfounded. And no, dear fans, I am not 'just jealous' (a childish retort which seems to be bandied about quite often at sites like this).