Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Classic Tarantino - some here will celebrate him, others will hate him. Personally, I don't know. Until the final fight I thought it was a decent average, but then it turned into such incredibly stupid crap, with people flying through the air like in The Matrix and blood spurting out of limbs, it made me wonder whether Quentin was just fucking with us. Uma Thurman in the lead role is now a cinematic icon, Tarantino in the chair is admirable, but this is more like one big parody. There are lots of sidetracks from the plot, some scenes are great, others nonsensical as if from another movie, but the finale (girl with a ball, screaming Japanese guys, blood…) killed any attempt at a legitimate action flick and turned Kill Bill into one big WTF. (28/03/2022)

I really like older Tarantino films, and even though they are in genres that I don't particularly enjoy, Tarantino managed to direct them creatively and with added value, which every film fan must appreciate. Whether it was Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, or Jackie Brown, I always found something that enriched me. Kill Bill marked the beginning of the era of Tarantino films without added value, which may fascinate genre fans with their "purity," but I completely avoid them. Kill Bill pays homage to East Asian action films, which is something that doesn't appeal to me at all. The characters lack even minimal depth, and there's no need to talk about the screenplay. It is completely empty, purposeless nonsense, lacking emotions and character psychology. I would add that it has decent camera work and music, for which it deserves one star from me. Overall impression 25%. (16/02/2008)

A purely visual and acoustic fashion-feast with a colorfully variable palette of moods. But rating it on its own would miss the mark. The first half is a bit lifeless, whereas the second half wouldn’t let me catch my breath. The sequel, Volume 2, should theoretically start in the spirit of the second half of the first Kill Bill. If it does start that way, I’m genuinely curious to see what the climax of the whole show will be. If it actually builds up further, as a three-hour whole, it will turn out to be a brilliant work. I believe that will happen. And I’m asking myself a key question: Is it even possible to make such a spectacular and cool film seanse out of such a simple subject? (07/10/2003)

A cool rip-off of Shogun Assassin with references to a couple dozen other films. One big stylistic exercise, which in the shadow of the brilliant Volume II completely loses its meaning and unnecessarily takes away from the credit of the whole. ♫ OST song rating: 4/5 (17/03/2023)

The last time I met Bill was about twenty years ago. Since then, time has taken its cruel toll on me and David Carradine. I gave this film five stars back in the day, and I'd happily give it five stars again today because I enjoyed all those gory action scenes (yes, including the animated ones) and the cheesy clichés that Tarantino deliberately used in the film (with glee, I’m sure). I was even willing to get over all those many logic holes except for one. The waking up from a four-year coma was a bit too much for me. I guess I take it personally, but I just couldn’t get over that bullshit. I was only dead for four days, spent the next month staring intensely at the ceiling, and when they finally managed to sit me up after that relatively short period of time, I found that the speed of the earth's rotation had dramatically increased, so I had to be propped up to keep from collapsing. And then it took ten days of practice before my useless rubber limbs started resembling legs again. So, all that nonsense about just thirteen hours after four years made me take one star off my rating. Otherwise, the film was a standard Tarantino wackiness (just the way I like it) as in: a lot of severed body parts, oodles of blood (black and white, animated, and regular), and a bunch of over-the-top nonsense (the kind that I didn’t mind). I was just surprised by how light on dialogue it was. / Lesson learned: Enjoy life. (18/09/2022)