Master and student should not reverse roles

Rating: 1/10 (26 June 2006)

Kill Bill I was a delightful surprise, living up to its hype as Tarantino's comic-tinged homage to Chinese and Japanese action-genre films. I could easily imagine all the old directors from Toei Studios having a blast watching Tarantino's final sword-fight scene, a loving imitation of all their samurai reincarnation or Shogun's Ninja films. Then Tarantino had to go and release this pap and spoil everything.
There are two principle problems with this film. First, Tarantino decided he didn't want to do genre any more. KBII is a "serious" film, about such weighty topics as guilt and redemption and love and death and all those other philosophical topics Woody Allen used to poke fun at before he decided to become a "serious" filmmaker, too.
Well, maybe Tarantino could have pulled that off - he didn't do so bad in Pulp Fiction - but he makes what for me is one of those mistakes a film fan can not forgive another film fan for making: he trivializes his predecessors.
Although this film has a large chunk at the beginning paying tribute to the old Shaw Bros. studio (which the first film promised but never got around to), the principle references in this reference-laden film are to the films of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. And unfortunately, in deciding to make a "serious" film, in order to deal with these references, Tarantino decides that Peckinpah and Leone made typical genre films (i.e., not "serious" films), and that therefore it was up to a better director (himself) to make a "serious" film from their raw materials.
Well, here's the news, Quentin. The Wild Bunch is the American version of Homer's Iliad, and all you've managed to come up with is a Hallmark greeting card that doesn't rhyme. Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West is the Cistine Chapel of a modern Michaelangelo, and all you've given us here is a color-by-numbers Norman Rockwell copy.
What in the name of heaven could Tarantino have been thinking of by trying to "out-serious" directors we know perfectly well he admires?What we get here are cartoon versions of moments from Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Once Upon a Time in the West. And that stolen Ennio Morricone music! sure it worked in KBI, because that was homage to Asian genre films and Asian genre films did that sort of thing all the time; but if you're going to get serious, it's time to get original; and, for heaven's sake, Morricone is still alive, I'm sure he'd have been glad to write a new score.
Finally, I should mention an obvious influence on this film that Tarantino would probably not want mentioned - the films of the Coen Brothers. Although they started earlier than Tarantino, they are still technically of the same generation as he. I'm not talking plagiarism - the Coens have done their share of "homaging" with and without credit to the originals. But Tarantino can't afford to try to "out-serious' filmmakers still making films. Especially since the Coens know how to do an homage with respect.
What Tarantino ends up with here is a bunch of scenes that keep banging into each other like box-cars on a (slowly) derailing train. Better it wasn't made. Skip it.