Movie Review
Tarantino forgets to add storyline while killing off Bill
by Brian Abrams

   Here’s a guy who’s a total movie buff.
   He made his first two films for movie lovers just like him. That is, people like you and me.
   In sharing his passion for the cinema, he has inspired filmmakers, students and the entire industry by the dozens to this day.
   In fact, it’s safe to call him the most influential director of the last decade.
   But now, Quentin Tarantino is making movies for himself.
   After Jackie Brown, we tasted just a resonance of self-indulgence, but after his latest film, Kill Bill, it’s surefire: Tarantino has forgotten about those people—um—what are we called? An audience. That’s it.
   In the first few minutes, the director’s credit is even scripted “The 4th Film By Quentin Tarantino.”
   No one in the business has the audacity to do that. (Well, at least no one has succeeded at overriding their editors until now.)
   Then the story gets totally bogged down in Tarantino’s magic show.
   It’s as if ever since Jackie Brown (1997, and he’s done nothing since), Tarantino has been keeping a journal of “1001 camera tricks for the 21st century.”
   And believe me, there’s plenty of eye candy: severed heads and arms with spattered blood that if characterized as “excessive” would be an understatement; black silhouettes forefront a cool blue backdrop in kung fu grips.
   Oh, there’s even a 10-minute animé sequence.
   The list of rabbits in the hat goes on and on.
   That’s exactly the problem with Kill Bill.
   In his first two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (which are both undeniably masterpieces), the director broke the rules of filmmaking and invented all new ones.
   His revolutionary concepts of editing and filmmaking would be cookie-cut by 50 films, at least, in the past years.
   But Kill Bill doesn’t use his rulebook, just tricks. There’s a difference. Example: I haven’t even said a word about the plotline yet. You know why? Because amid all of the “look what I learned outside film school” show ’n’ tell, I almost forgot the story.
   Basically, a nameless femme fatale (Uma Thurman) is tracking down a posse of vicious murderers who put down her husband and child at her wedding.
   And the story expands to the background of the killers and the soap operas among them.
  Oh, and yes, the film did originally run at 196 minutes, and, yes, that’s the exact plotline that’s getting stretched to Kill Bill: Volume 2, scheduled for a February theater release.
    I just hope Tarantino gets over himself soon.