I saw what proclaims itself "The 4th Film by Quentin Tarantino" this weekend, Kill Bill Volume 1.
It's pretty, it's got some excellent fight scenes, excellent production design, excellent cinematography. It's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.
However, were it not for "The 4th Film by Quentin Tarantino" banner at the beginning, there would be no particular evidence that this was a Quentin Tarantino film.
The dialog is almost perfunctory, with little of the grandiose kinesis that characterized his best film, Pulp Fiction.
The violence is cartoonish, with severed limbs flying and blood spurting from the stumps like firehoses. There are a few exceptions where Tarantino approaches the confrontational brutality of Pulp Fiction, but the film is an elaborate revenge fantasy driven entirely by violence, and a few effective moments of cruelty do not justify the silliness that occupies every other scene.
Most disappointing is that the film has no structural complexity. Like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill jumps back and forth in time. Unlike Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill is careful to spoonfeed the audience its transitions; the audience is never lost and never has to draw any conclusions.
Pulp Fiction had a complex structure that was not limited to simply unraveling the order of events. It enabled the audience to discover for themselves the relationship between this scene and another, between this character and another. In Kill Bill, there is nothing to discover; the film is one character's quest for revenge and it has no other content.
It is, of course, possible that Tarantino is holding back the good stuff for next spring's Kill Bill Volume Two--the two theatrical releases only amount to one film, split in the editing room because of length. However, if that is the case, Volume One is a poor advertisement for Volume Two; I not only do not see any complex structure, I do not see any place that complex structure could be hung. If Tarantino surprises me, I'll fall to my knees in worship, but I don't think it's going to happen.
Posted by Greg at October 13, 2003 10:08 AM