Kill Bill: Volume 1 Reviews

With Kill Bill, Tarantino has belatedly made the self-indulgent mess many expected from him years ago.

| Original Score: 3/5

As a whole, Kill Bill might be an entertaining product, but, after seeing Volume 1, I was insulted.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

For the first time in Tarantino's filmmaking career, the written story -- both in word and development -- proves the least interesting part of the whole equation.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Even more gory and adolescent than its models, which explains both the fun and the unpleasantness of this globe-trotting romp.

Full Review

Just as only NBA fanatics can justify watching the first three quarters of a game, only Tarantino fanatics will be satisfied with the first installment of Kill Bill.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

[T]he cinematic equivalent of karaoke or bad photocopies, mindlessly adopting style while forgetting the basic precepts of storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5

Embarrassingly masturbatory...

Full Review

While the picture oozes style (and blood), it comes up short on substance - which is what has always set Tarantino's grindhouse homages head and shoulders above the pulp pictures that inform them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Do I feel cheated by having to buy another movie ticket to see how 'Kill Bill' ends? You betcha.

Full Review

In the wake of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Matrix series, even the recent So Close, Tarantino's movie comes off as been there, kicked that.

Full Review | Original Score: C

An exercise in style.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Structurally and narratively amputated, Volume 1 retains head and guts but loses its heart and gams to the second installment.

| Original Score: 2/4

It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4

Really, it seemed to me that Tarantino was merely trying to shock people into forgetting the idiocracy of what was happening on screen.

Full Review

Volume One is, above all, a parade of fantastic fight scenes, each one bloodier than the one that came before ... bloody in the Looney-Toons/Monty-Python sense.

| Original Score: C+

Half-a-movie at full-price -- it's annoyingly unsatisfying. Also self-indulgent, sadistic, juvenile, pretty to look at, and empty as a beer can on my front porch.

Quentin Tarantino makes terrible movies really, really well.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Kill Bill isn't human. It's cinema as cinema. Tarantino is like a hyper, too-bright child, worrying you for your attention, jumping from thought to thought in his brain

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Six years and this is all that Quentin Tarantino can come up with?

Full Review

Kill Bill: Volume 1 is essentially a pop culture wanker's failed multimedia experiment, a vacuous junk heap of dorky gags and riffs, violent anime and offensive slapstick.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4