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What a juvenile, prurient piece of trash. I remember hearing good reviews about this Tarrentino opus (I guess, in hollywood, politics is everything, and it doesn't hurt to be married to Coppola's daughter!) Thin, preditable plotting; trite dialogue; non-existent characterizations; gratuitous blood-letting; unimaginative cinematography. It has all the finesse and depth of a comic book. No wait, that's a bit too complementary. Instead, let me say that it has all the finesse and depth of an "action figure" commercial. It seems dubious to read artistic merit into this latest of Tarrentino's now familiar concoctions of violence, sadism, and comic book bravura."True Romance," one of his earlier scripts, bristled with a fresh perspective and daring, with poignant ne'er do wells somehow imbuing their tawdry dreams with dignity and heroism. "Pulp Fiction", another of his films I admire, redeemed itself with its startling frankness and portrayal of underwordly types skating the edge of disaster. Both films were peopled with wonderful, quirky characters, and mind-bending plot twists. Great films? I wouldn't say so in either case. But good film? Entertaining films? Yes.
"Kill Bill Volume 1" has none of these redeeming features. It's a predictable revenge story with a skeleton bare plot, and the most meagre of characterizations. But at least I know why there's a "Kill Bill Volume 2": about 1 hour and 15 minutes of Volume 1's length is taken up by tiresome, intermiable kung-fu sword fighting scenes. So they had to make another film just to explain what all the blood-spurting of the first movie was all about.
Follow Ups:
I'm sure this is for naught, but I'll say it anyway. Why, simply because the movie wasn't your cup of tea, must you resort to calling it a 'prurient piece of trash.'?Did you feel a gust of wind as the point of the movie flew past you as you were watching it?
No doubt any number of people have referred to Pulp Fiction with a similar epithet.
Don't be put off by the strength of expressions. Opinions, strongly stated, beget good discussion.Yet, I would appreciate it if you could clarify the "point" that breezed past me. Because, to coin your phrase, it did seem like so much wind to me. It's not that the film did not have a point, which, to my mind, was "revenge." It's just that it dealt the whole concept of revenge in a very obvious and two-dimensional way. Characterization is reduced to samurai robe and a sword. Plot is reduced to killing and maming scores of faceless motivationless automatons, video-game style. Revenge is reduced to mere bloodsport.
KBV1 has all the complexity of a Steve Reeves Hurcules flick; it's just that the director had more money and more technology to play with.
I realize that intelligent people admire this movie. I admire some of QT's other work. But this one doesn't measure up.
And I do stand by my comment that the film does betray a certain prurience on QT's part -- I am thinking primarily of the hospital scene -- a certain relishing of perversion and sadism.
A lot of folks admire "Resevoir Dogs," a worse and even more prurient film, in my estimation, than KBV1. I don't.
So far, I haven't heard anyone give a statement of the film's artist or thematic merit. Was it titillating? suspenseful? Does it evoke any kind of visceral reaction? Yes. But this doesn't make it a good film.
I wouldn't say there was much sex in the movie...certainly not prurient!But, it's a nice word anyway (good try)...
Prurient also has a more general definition, referring to any excessively unwholesome and perverse preoccupations or desires. Though, as you correctly point out, it is generally used to refer to sexual preoccupations, as being the most common type of "prurient" interest. But, if you think pimping a comatose woman in a hospital bed AND having her bite the tongue out of the john's mouth (and WHAT a tongue at that!), is not "prurient," than what is?
I personally enjoy ALL his works. The whole section and the dialogue between Uma & Sonny Chiba is alone worth the whole movie !!!!This is film making at its best but Tarantino style !
Personally I enjoyed Part I more than Part II. Still, both were great.
AP
# The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men # Samuel L. Jackson (Ezekiel 25:17)> Pulp Fiction <Plinius SA-REF----M-8----CD-101-------Martin Logan Ascents
That made me want to see it again - the same 30 minutes, plus more.Next time I caught additional 20 minutes or so - and wanted to see more again.
It took four or five attempts - thanks to the cable service - for me to finally finish the film, meaning I saw the ending that many times.
It is a tricky film. I can understand your reaction, if you were expecting to see a conventional film. But it is more a work of ark, as grins indicated, than a plot-based work.
I am a Tarantino hater, not fan, but I would not deny his talent - too bad he almost never uses his true talent, resorting instead to making garbage. But the artistic side in KB is so strong it speaks its own language.
But I suspect if like you I started watching the film from beginning, it might irritate me too - would be harder to get to that art side, which is so abundantly present in the ending, and to me it was THAT that set the tone for the film.
Where is the artistic crux of this movie? It seems more like a festival of the cliche and commonplace. It's another Rocky movie with Uma Thurman in the star role instead of Sylvester Stallone. I won't say I've never changed my mind about a movie, or even that I haven't been completely wrong about some. But give me a hint. Drop a few breadcrumbs to guide me to what you see as the film's artistic merits.
Hard to describe it, but I would suggest you start like I did - with the last fight scene... it is full of true art and is incredibly beautiful. Even my wife, who hates Tarantino and violent movies, watched it and liked it.
you like the ending, multiple times, and what led up to it.
What you're missing is the context: seen properly, the film is even better than you think now.
Well, you protest so much your ego will prevent you from one day saying, "Tarantino is a genius! One of the most skilled and original talents working in film today!"
Skill is just that - skill, and genius also must have a heart - something that Tarantino has not shown yet. As I already stated - the skill part is there, now I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.I actually eventually saw the film from its beginning, so you are barking up the wrong tree. And I would still not consider it a great film overall - rather a patchwork. Although good patches were more present than in another such work - the Pulp Fiction.
stronger, more heart-warming story?
In Pulp Fiction, the love story between Uma and Mr. 707 I found captivating.
Jackie Brown: it's really a love story, too.
You almost don't notice it.I agree about the romance part in PF - it is perhaps the best part of the movie, with loose ends and unresolved tension... I liked it!
with KB2.
Together, they are a fantastic work of art; very different, as they must be to maintain interest in a story for such a long time.
That fight in the kitchen, with the closing line to the daughter, "If you feel raw about this in the future and come after me, I'll understand and I'll be waiting."
Just the right amount of compassion, tempered with the killer's anger.
Uma's performance raised KB1 up very high. That cute little Japanese girl killer was super, too, as was the cartoon interlude. A brilliant film, in its own right.
(Ok, I give up on you!)
are different from each other.
You expeced another Jackie Brown and were disappointed to find a brilliant collage of four variants of martial arts, and their films.
The plot is a central one to hundreds, if not thousands, of crime and "oater" films. Yet, even so, Quentin puts in enough of his signature plot quirks to make it new.
Wait a few months and see it again... or not.
Grins
As per my response to another of the film's defenders, tell me what makes this bit of comic book of a movie (and, yes, I acknowledge Tarrentino's own homage to the influence comics have on his sensibility in the movie with the line-art interlude) a work of art.I admire some of QT's other work, but this one struck me as thin and predictable, more mired in the comic-book sensibility itself than distilling anything poetic or artistic from it.
Give me something to think about the next time I have a chance to see it. Maybe it'll change my view.
But what I saw the first time was a film that became preoccupied with the conventions of comic books and eastern martial arts films to the exclusion of almost every other cinematic concern. It seemed more like a film Beavis and Butthead would make, than one Tarrentino would make. I can almost hear them chuckling when the john is about to mount the pimped and comatose Uma Thurman.
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