Did we see the same film?

Chris, in what way did your experience differ?

I thought Kill Bill was entirely lacking of the twists and turns that made Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and True Romance so great.

"whose attack looks remarkably like the Agent Smith clones scene from Matrix: Reloaded"

Indeed, it did. And the ensuing battle with O-Ren Ishii was reminiscent of Crouching Tiger. To me, both of these were too long and too close to the originals to be tributes.

There were some interesting scenes, but overall I thought the movie relied too much on flash-bang fighting and not on the story. I had high expectations for this film. I'm a huge fan of Quentin's past work, including "The Man from Hollywood" in Four Rooms. My only hope is that Vol. 1 was all set-up, and the real film will come in Vol. 2.

Chris said:
Indeed, it did. And the ensuing battle with O-Ren Ishii was reminiscent of Crouching Tiger. To me, both of these were too long and too close to the originals to be tributes.

But isn't the whole postmodern movie scene, Tarantino's playground? By that logic, there are *no* original films, *no* original scenes, just heightened and repackaged versions of what has already been (which all the Matrix films and Crouching Tiger are both guity of too). In that respect, I think the "obviousness" of the scenes actually adds to the film, although I would disagree that he does nothing newly-stylised with then: I thought they flowed really well and the juxtaposition of the Tokyo restuarant with all its contemporary generic references with the idyllic Japanese village setting in the snow worked perfectly as commentary/critque of competing (and, as Tarantino shows, complementary) genre traditions.

Indeed. I think people going to see Kill Bill with an expectation of a film as "clever" as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction will be sorely disappointed. This is not because Kill Bill is not as good as those films (it is), but because this was not the sort of film that Tarantino was attempting to make. It is, like all of his work, a tribute film. And just like Dogs was a tribute to City On Fire (among others) and Pulp a tribute to Elmore Leonard (among others), so Kill Bill is a tribute to a whole genre of 1970s Hong Kong action flicks. It rocks.