One of the most relentlessly violent and bloody films I have yet to see. There are few contenders, though the South Korean 'Thirst' springs to mind. The 'Kill Bill' series is Tarantino at his most comically gory, it's in the territory of comic book heroes and villains, and everyone fights to the death and is decapitated in showers of blood.
There is no letup, no scene where the viewer can feel safe. For many it's likely a somewhat difficult movie to watch for this reason, but where 'Thirst' triumphed and where 'Kill Bill' failed to some extent is that I found myself getting bored of it. It's sort of like watching a 'Saw' film, but one that's nicely written and brilliantly shot. It's shocking, but it ended up just sort of bumming me out. And I think that's because nothing changes, other than an escalation of gore and the blood content. Where 'Thirst' continued to build on our character's personalities throughout the hardship, we get most of the feelings out of the in the beginning of 'Kill Bill', before moving on to the continuous slaughter.
That's not to say that this was a bad movie - it wasn't, it's just probably my least favourite Tarantino movie. It does a lot of things excellently though, and it does a good job of making the bride be one of the most badass (and I'm been sick in my mouth a little just uttering that word) characters of all time. And she is, right? After all she's been through, and in her yellow jumpsuit with a black go faster stripe.
The movie heavily pays homage to the classic samurai revenge flicks, and follows their same basic structure. The style is beautiful, hinting at just about every classic martial arts movie without directly ripping any of them off. There's even an animated sequence (no less bloody than the rest of the movie, despite featuring a child as it's main character). The swords and the swings and the sprays of blood are presented so artfully, it's violence porn in it's purest form, and you can clearly see the love that went into creating every little detail. Even if it's not for me, it's an excellently crafted movie, and not only for being one of the best homages to eastern cinema that I've ever seen.
The gore links the samurai action in with a more traditional Tarantino style, as victims are left dismembered yet still moaning and alive (the scene with that aid who had both her arms cut off was particularly difficult to watch) have definite flavours of films such as 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Django Unchained'. People aren't just dying horribly, their surviving horribly and moaning about it loudly. The filming techniques manages to retain the quirky Tarantino style too, even as it plays partially into your basic samurai revenge style. There are lots of little quirks which help to explain things to us in ways that could be seen as cheating if they weren't pulled off so majestically. It's difficult to explain, but it's a little like reading the blue prints of the movie as you watch it. A great example of this is the see-through car boot letting us see the hostage in the beginning of 'From Dusk till Dawn', and another is when Mia draws a magical square (its actually a rectangle, which always bothered me) in the air in 'Pulp Fiction'. Add to this little weird uses of sound and music like when the Ironside Siren sound plays ridiculously loudly whenever she sees a target.
I didn't hugely enjoy it personally, and I haven't bothered seeing the second installment yet (at the time of writing), but I do appreciate that this is an excellently put together piece of cinematography, and a worthy addition to the Tarantino series. It feels somehow less real than his other movies, and I think I even saw somewhere that the 'Kill Bill' series are actually movies in the Tarantinoverse, which would make sense as they do sort of feel like they could be the sort of crazy-ass fiction that would fit in with that crazy-ass world.
Kill Bill: Volume 1: 77.2