Steve Reads

 . . . It is, however, disappointing when an intelligent critic like Roger Ebert loves vacuous and self-indulgent trash like Kill Bill.

I’m not going to say very much about this film, which I saw a few weeks ago, because I think that would be granting it more stature than it deserves. I will say this, however: even by its own standards, I think it’s trash. It’s trying so hard to be more than a standard action movie. It’s even trying very hard to pay homage to classic Bruce Lee movies. It’s trying to do all of this with a distinctive visual style. I think it fails on all those counts: it’s a blood-and-guts movie which I spent a good long while trying to appreciate on a deeper level. There is no such level to appreciate it on. I then tried to appreciate it for sheer visual style and innovation. I can’t: it’s The Matrix Reloaded with swords. And yet it’s Tarantino, which immediately buys it a couple more stars from otherwise intelligent critics.

I also hope that any film would try to give you some reason to watch it instead of the thousands of films you could rent on a given night. Why watch Kill Bill, for instance, when you could watch the 1985 action flick Commando? I can’t think of a good reason, honestly; Commando was the first movie that came to mind when I wanted a comparison. Both feature a hero or heroine progressing through Little Boss after Little Boss on the way to killing Big Boss. Both feature cool weapons (machine guns or rocket launchers in Commando; swords in in Kill Bill). Both feature graphic deaths and spurting blood. (Most action movies will give you death, and most will give you blood, but only the rare few will give you blood that spurts.) In short, I see nothing in Kill Bill that you couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. And in the end, what else is a movie trying to do if not carve out some tiny piece of uniqueness? This seems like a rather low hurdle to hit, but somehow Kill Bill fell under the bar.

And no, this isn’t just Steve Hating All Action Movies. I’ve tried very hard to judge the film on what appear to be its own internal standards, and even by that measure it comes up lacking. Just to make sure it wasn’t Steve The Film Effete, I saw it with a couple people whose film tastes are drastically different than mine — less arty, perhaps, and both more prone to liking action films. They and I left it with the same confused feeling: was there more to this movie that I just didn’t get? I think we all agree: nope. It tried really hard to rise above, but didn’t.

I’m likely to avoid watching the next Tarantino flick (even after the Kill Bill series is over) until people whose film taste I trust have come back with many thumbs up. It’s really too bad, because I adore Pulp Fiction. Reservoir Dogs, for all its nihilism and violence, is at least stylish and desperately evil. Kill Bill, on the other hand, contributes nothing to film except disdain for the medium.

One final note: throughout Kill Bill, I was reminded of Orson Welles’ quote about Federico Fellini (from David Thompson’s