Kill Bill: Volume 1

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Kill Bill: Volume 1 shows Quentin Tarantino so effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique that he reminds me of a virtuoso violinist racing through "Flight of the Bumble Bee" -- or maybe an accordion prodigy setting a speed record for "Lady of Spain."

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The worst thing about the first Quentin Tarantino picture in five years is that after 93 minutes of some of the most luscious violence and spellbinding storytelling you're likely to see this year, Kill Bill ends.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Delivered with such high panache and brio, it's mesmerizing.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Although this installment is a beautiful stand-alone thang (check out how its chronology-juggling storyline creates a perfect circle, structure-wise).

Time Richard Corliss

By next semester, some grad student will be writing a thesis on the B-movie influences on this A+ film.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

"His eye is incredibly sharp and amazing, in regard to visceral cinema," says Uma Thurman, who has worked with Tarantino on both Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. "He's a great storyteller. He's very seductive as a filmmaker."

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film may be bloody, but it's also bloody gorgeous: a grandly fetishized epic of cinematic aggression. It's a tale of vengeance that hinges on Tarantino's love of ferocity as spectacle -- his immersion in action and exploitation, his addiction to the jazzy catharsis of junk-film kicks.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Reconfirms Tarantino's status as the master of pop cinema and puts a sense of excitement into the year. He has matched, if not eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's "Pulp Fiction," though not its human charm.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Don’t leave until the final credits finish rolling or you’ll miss what many are considering Kill Bill: Vol. 1’s best bit. Trust us on this one.

USA Today Mike Clark

Bill re-establishes that Tarantino ranks with "Boogie Nights'" Paul Thomas Anderson as one of the few Hollywood filmmakers of the past 25 years with the stuff to win a lifetime achievement award.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Simultaneously a spectacular act of movie-making and a slight movie. Or is that impossible: When the means are so gloriously abundant, can the end ever be merely trivial?

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies -- the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous.

LA Weekly John Powers

At once an astonishing piece of filmmaking and, quite possibly, an Olympian folly.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It remains to be seen whether Kill Bill is merely a skilled slice of juvenilia or a pastiche with real emotional and thematic underpinnings, but based on Tarantino's storytelling command in the first half, it's worth giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Empire Colin Kennedy

There is much to admire in Vol. 1, not least a performance from Uma Thurman as steely as the plate in her character’s head and a knowing soundtrack that effortlessly smears the boundaries between east and west.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

What we've got is a mixed though certainly entertaining bag.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Self-indulgent, overwrought, shallow and ridiculous. It is also brilliant, a blast of cinematic lunacy and as much of a guilty pleasure as the schlocky movies Tarantino adores, which was probably the point. Sometimes, only a Big Mac will do.

Chicago Tribune Mark Caro

There's no question that Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is a virtuoso piece of filmmaking. What's questionable is whether it's more than that.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

One of the most violent films this year, it's no more so than many of the Asian kung fu flicks it pays homage to. Don't be surprised if it slaughters its action-film competition in this overcrowded movie season.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

An overstuffed menu from a master chef who's trying way too hard to please himself.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

His epic reworking of their lurid conventions proved so long that it was divided into two parts, and this one ends on a hell of a cliff-hanger.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

Without a doubt, making the most substantial impact is Thurman. While she has proven her versatility over the years, her work as The Bride shows that her talent is matched by her fearlessness.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

The movie love can make it hard to hear the human pulse beneath the noise (it's there, if faint), much less see if there's anything new going on.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Mr. Tarantino is an irrepressible showoff, recklessly flaunting his formal skills as a choreographer of high-concept violence, but he is also an unabashed cinephile, and the sincerity of his enthusiasm gives this messy, uneven spectacle an odd, feverish integrity.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Though it's a blast to watch, it becomes tiresome over the long haul--25 minutes of Thurman hacking her way through the crowd to get to a woman whose fate we're informed of early on. It's the most climactic anti-climax in recent film history, a no-d'uh coda awaiting the ending it really deserves but never gets. Not this year, anyway.

Newsweek David Ansen

Brilliant, but shallow.

Film Threat Jim Agnew

A hyper-violent, hyper-gory, kung-fu grindhouse flick. And there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Is Kill Bill a homage to great Asian action movies? Yes. Is Tarantino trying to outdo his cherished masters (on a budget that dwarfs their films)? Of course. Is there any other point of any of this? Let's see "Vol. 2."

Variety Todd McCarthy

A strange, fun and densely textured work that gets better as it goes along.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's bound to be the love-it-or-hate-it movie of 2003.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This long-awaited movie has been unwisely chopped into two pieces -- the second is due in February -- when it really needed to be one long, delirious ride.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

An incomplete movie, artlessly cleft in the middle. Cinema interruptus.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Fun and smart, but undeniably thin, the first installment of Tarantino's action epic is a fanboy fever dream. The clichés are out in maximum force, tempting any critic fool enough to go one-on-one with the master. (The prize: a Ph.D. in Tarantinology.)

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

As visually arresting as Kill Bill often is, there's a stultifying blankness about it. Despite Tarantino's obvious enthusiasms, he comes off jaded and cynical: He's seen plenty of movies, and this is his proof.

Slate David Edelstein

Kill Bill is about nothing more (or less) than its director's passion for the mindless action pictures that got him through adolescence. It isn't sex without love: It's an orgy with just enough love.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Quentin Tarantino's lively and show-offy tribute to Asian martial-arts flicks, bloody anime, and spaghetti westerns he soaked up as a teenager is even more gory and adolescent than its models, which explains both the fun and the unpleasantness of this globe-trotting romp.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

When French New Wave directors like Truffaut and Godard paid tribute to Hollywood pulp, they poeticized it and gave it an infusion of feeling. Tarantino’s tributes are, for the most part, far less complicated: He’s a fan, and Kill Bill is his mash note.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Structurally and narratively amputated, Volume 1 retains head and guts but loses its heart and gams to the second installment. Maybe Tarantino figured that Thurman's legs, as long as the Mississippi, were sufficient to carry this half of a movie.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The problem isn't that Tarantino's in love with death; it's that he's deadly dull. Even "Natural Born Killers" made a stab at social commentary and satire of America?s celebrity-mad media. Kill Bill merely giggles through gore and asks you to smile at its style.

The New Yorker David Denby

Kill Bill is what’s formally known as decadence and commonly known as crap...Coming out of this dazzling, whirling movie, I felt nothing--not anger, not dismay, not amusement. Nothing. [13 October 2003, p. 113]

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill inflicts intolerable cruelty on its characters, and on its audience -- though I'd like to believe that there is no mainstream audience for what has already been described, quite correctly, as the most violent movie ever released by an American studio.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The really relevant defect of this thriller is that it isn't scary.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

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