I saw Kill Bill last night. Not good.
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Okay, last night I was really, really sleepy, and not really feeling too good. I was worried I'd fall asleep - fortunately, I didn't (just so you know my state of mind!).
Kill Bill is (as the name suggests) about killing a whole load of people. It's got Matrix qualities (watching bullets flying through the air, slow motion fight moves, etc), but it's probably more like a cheezy martial arts film (midway, it switches to Anime, which is actually very well done). As per other Tarantino films, there's exceptional/anal attention to detail, so you see people's shoes as they walk, and in the closing scene, someone using two pens to write a list on a piece of paper. One wonders how much these sorts of things really add to a film, but I guess you've probably got to go a bit too far in order to get the majority right. In this respect, Kill Bill is excellently presented.
In terms of plot lines, stories, sub-plots, etc, well, they're hard to find. I suppose "volume 2" might reveal some substance which I missed in this one. Taking this film on it's own, there's literally no point to it. There's some precident for the whole thing, which is a bit tennuous, and then it builds from there. So, flakey foundations, but not a bad building on top. The cracks do show, and things do annoy, however.
Uma Thurman, on the other hand, looks excellent throughout. I'd say a pretty damn good performance from her. She fits the part very well, although she can't talk "hard" and be that convincing. She does do knowledgable, cold and discipilined pretty well. The addition of yellow biker leathers and a samurai sword are no bad thing.
Actually, to be fair, everyone looks good in this film. I guess all part of the "attention to detail" in scene setting. Lucy Liu is more convincing as a super-evil fightin' woman, although when she fights, she doesn't fair as well as she probably should (her big fight scene is a bit too easily over, given her standing in the underworld).
If you watch a Bruce Lee film, the bad dubbing, grainy picture and so on add to the impression that the people he's fighting really are fighting back, and really are getting hurt. Not so in this - I guess it's an Americanised version of that - looks bad, but somehow you know it isn't, so you can go home happy.
So, all in all, it's a whole lot of fighting. It's all done well, apart from the spraying blood from severed limbs and such like. That gets pretty annoying after the second or third time. I guess a link to some cheesy martial arts or anime film or other, but I'm too much of a heathen to know that.
The Cat says: Don't bother seeing it. If you're bored, get the DVD out in a few months, but it ain't worth your pennies at the cinema.