Decent, but what's all the fuss about?

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 1999)

Most people I know who have seen this movie either think it's the best movie ever or the worst piece of trash ever produced. I happen to fall in the middle. I enjoyed this film, though not immensely. I found it funny, which actually kind of disturbs me in a way. Should it be funny when someone accidentally gets blown away? Yet I found it to be. Still, I think the extreme amount of violence got to me, since it mostly did not have much of a point; it is really only the one scene of violence that I thought was amusing. I thought the Bruce Willis storyline could have been done without, instead focusing on Travolta and Jackson. Instead, the "story" meanders and seems largely without purpose. Despite that, though, it was still an enjoyable film. I recommend it as long as people realise what they're in for, and don't just watch it because of the hype surrounding it; when someone expects perfection and they don't get it, they tend to over-compensate and react more negatively than they otherwise would have, and end up giving this film a 1 instead of the 5 they might have given it had they not been shocked by the content.
I give this film a 6.5, mainly for the dark humor. This movie is not for everyone. Don't watch this movie with blinders on, and hopefully it will be worth the 2 hours and (possibly) the $3-4 you spent to rent it (although in Canada, I know you can watch an unedited version of it on Showcase- that channel is great for films they can't show on the networks without such severe editing that part of the story is lost). The other thing I liked about this movie was the characters themselves; Tarantino is very good at taking what would from the outside seem like despicable, inhumane creatures and making them human. While I don't know how many hitmen are actually nice guys, it is nice to see films sometimes that have normal people doing bad things, instead of just evil, rotten, flat characters. This film is thus a good character study, for those interested in the workings of the human mind.