Quentin Tarantino: there's a name that screams to some people "come see this movie!"  I think the guy has talent and has done some innovative things, but when it becomes more about him than the movie then there's bound to be some issues.  Quentin is overrated.  Just because he does something unusual doesn't mean it's good. 

Kill Bill is the culmination of that.  It's full of unusual cinema presentations, but not all of them work.  In fact, sometimes it seems like Quentin is throwing in certain elements for the sake of doing something unexpected rather than because it is a good idea.  You can sew a cow turd into a blanket.  It would be different for sure, but it's still crap.

The movie is a revenge story.  A woman who is part of a gang of assassins is herself taken down by the same organization.  To add insult to injury they do the job at her wedding killing her groom, the pastor, and everyone else in attendance.  This seems to have something to do with the baby she's carrying which she claims belongs to the leader of the gang.  (I assume the full connection is revealed in the next movie).  She somehow lives through the ordeal and after a long coma sets out to kill the ones that stole her life.  From there it becomes a bloody romp through a field of body parts. 

In classic Quentin style the story is cut into sections and mixed up, jumping around in the timeline to reveal past and present in an intermingled fashion.  This much I like.  It's one of my favorite things about Quentin's style.  His stories are not linear, but this kind of reveal works well.

Other elements aren't so good, though, and are either distasteful or distracting.  The bleeping out of Uma Thuman's character's name is one.  She is only known to us as "The Bride" or "Black Mamba."  Whenever her real name is spoken a censorship bleep obscures it.  I found this annoying; it pulled me out of the movie (or would have if I hadn't already been pulled out) and would have rather them change the dialogue to exclude the name at all than to use this method. 

Another element is the switching of styles for segments of the movie.  It seems to try to create the feel of interconnecting but separate works.  One backstory is told using animation.  This one almost works since the story is told from beginning to end in this fashion.  However since no other segment is done like this it feels out of place to me.  But I can live with it since the movie is anime inspired and is, in some ways, a live-action adaptation of the style.

One that doesn't work at all is the sudden switch to black and white in the middle of a fight scene.  There is no reason for this except maybe to reduce the extreme gore factor in order to ensure a tamer rating.  Yet another part switches to silhouettes.  This one almost works, but instead feels thrown in for no reason other than just to have something they could say was different since it comes so close on the heels of the black and white segment.

Aside from the patchwork styles the movie is already weak.  The characters aren't the least bit believable which is worse because the acting is so bad.  Even the dialogue, at which Quentin is usually masterful, is terrible.  So bad acting, bad dialogue, and bad characters don't make for much of a good movie.  I guess grandiose is what they were purposefully going for, but instead of creating a fun atmosphere I just found myself cringing and more than once nearly picked up the remote to skip to the next scene because the one I was watching was so unbearably bad.  And I watch a lot of old Kung Fu movies so I'm used to these kinds of flaws, but out of the likes of actors as big as the ones in Kill Bill I expected more.  Vivica Fox is particularly bad, but even Uma Thurman, who I normally like, is hard to bear sometimes.  Lucy Liu isn't too good, either.  Sonny Chiba I liked, and the girl playing Go-Go wasn't too bad.

CONTENT:
Another problem I have with this movie is that it is extreme for no reason other than to be as extreme as it can.  The language is so bad it becomes annoying which is actually pretty common for Tarantino movies.  There is no sex or nudity but there are sexual situations and dialogue.  The violence is way over the top.  There are lots of body parts hacked off in gory detail even when it makes no sense to have them such as a bullet from a handgun severing legs as cleanly as a saw blade.  Geysers of blood erupt from the wounds.  I guess the point is to make them unrealistic maybe to lessen their impact. 

DVD:
Surprisingly there doesn't appear to be any kind of special edition or otherwise large package available for this movie.  I don't know, maybe there weren't enough people that liked it to make such a release profitable.  Anyway, there isn't much to offer in this single-disc plain Jane version.  It comes in a standard plastic box.  It has a couple of inserts.  One is just a card with a bunch of Kill Bill merchandise.  The other has a chapters list and a fairly long Citybeat movie review. 

Video is 2.35 widescreen.  Audio has 5.1 and DTS options.  The menus have an anime style to them.

Extras amount to a whopping 2, well not counting the trailers.  One is a behind the scenes bit about half an hour long.  It feels like it's more about Quentin Tarantino than the movie sometimes.  The whole release feels like that.  Every where you look is the tagline "The 4th film by Quentin Tarantino." Make it about the movie, not about him. There is a fairly interesting bit talking about the music in the movie.  All in all it's a far cry from the best behind the scenes feature I've ever seen.

The other feature is a live performance from the 5 6 7 8's who are featured in the movie.  I like the music, but the vocals are weak both in tune and timing.

Oh yeah, the encoding of the DVD is weird.  It wouldn't play at all on my regular DVD player.  When I played it in my DVD-ROM the controls didn't operate as the normally do.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
What it comes down to is that this is a goofy but extreme movie.  And I use both adjectives in their most negative contexts.  I'm usually one who needs to know the end of the story even if it's not very good, but I don't care a bit if I ever see the end of Kill Bill.  Maybe I still will but not if it takes any effort on my part.  In addition to a poor movie the DVD has next to nothing to offer and what it does have, while not really bad, is not particularly good, either.  I'll give Kill Bill 2 toes down - 1*.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age