If you want deepness of characterization and meaning, and if you respect kinetic elements of cinema - you will not find any

Rating: 1/10 (13 January 2016)

This film is bad and here are the reasons:
1 - drawn out chapters where nothing meaningful happens,
2 - scenario that has no back story or deeper characterization of dramatis personae, and
3 - one of the biggest crimes a film maker can do - anti-film language that lacks in virtuosity of mise-en-scène.
So yes, this is an anti-film, a boring theatrical play in which you even do not have interesting movement of actors and camera.
After the initial hype ''oh, I'm watching the Tarantino's film!'' you get sleepy because of boredom, because Quentin is doing his usual anti-film thing where they talk and talk and talk, and at the end of the film all that drawn out intro of first 3 chapters serves absolutely no purpose.
If your criteria for films is low you could not even say that this film is of so-so quality.
Considering what you expect from a film, from any film - do you expect real characters and real situations that have some significance to human existence, by which you can have at the same time fun and be deeply touched by human drama, and enjoying yourself and film because of that drama, because, you see, that is deeper form of fun.
Or you wanna cartoonish buffoonery that is empty and meaningless. This film holds no deeper meaning and even if we accept that and say ''I'm in for the fun, for the ride'' your fun is gonna be ruined to great extent by empty scenario and boring, utterly boring, direction and visual output.
Please take this seriously into account - this is not a film but theatrical play, this is an anti-film, one that is against anything kinetic in cinema. Just imagine masters of the 1940's Hollywood and their masterful command of mise-en-scène in long shots where they conduct a ballet of actors moving combined with delicate tracking shots. In this film you will not find that visual beauty of ''moving'' cinema but anti-film language.
All that proves that film is visually in decadence and decline for decades. If you want fun and at the same time meaning, deepness and poetry stick to visual masters like Peckinpah or Kubrick, even with great craftsmen like Siegel.
The main problem of this film, despite boring film language and scenario, is that you see Quentin and not movie characters. Everything is shallow and forced. You simply do not care for any of those characters in this film, because their back stories are non-existent. You simply do not care will they live or die.
That has nothing to do with ''are the characters likable or not'', are they ''good'' or ''bad''. We know in our lives that ''good'' and ''bad'' are intertwined in every one of us. Great, or at least good, film must have some kind of deeper characterization for us to appreciate the situations our heroes are in. In this film you will not find any.
At the end of this review I will ask you to think about Peckinpah's ''bad'' guys. You see, Peck loves all his characters, even the ''bad'' ones. He does not discards them easily, and if, and when, they die those deaths have some meaning, meaning to the plot, meaning to the characters... Watch Sam's films, I implore you.