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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1165162" data-attributes="member: 812">The story from both Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino is that quite late in the game, as shooting was winding down, Weinstein (one of the owners of Miramax Pictures, the distributors of the film) visited the set in Beijing, saw some footage and suggested to Tarantino that instead of trying to cram everything into a single film, they release two films and allow him to put in everything he wanted.Saw the film at a midnight screening last night.Before I saw Kill Bill, my answer to the question of "Is Tarantino a genius or a hack?" was "Insufficient data. Unable to compute."Now I have sufficient data.There's no question, this is a violent film. A really, really violent film. And this coming from somebody who watches a LOT of violent films. I am, frankly, shocked to see this film get released with an R rating, and more generally get released at all by a major studio like Miramax. This is one violent film.And it's not a FUN film. One of the things Tarantino does, or rather, does not do, is provide any moral framework to his revenge tale. We aren't asked to identify with these characters, we aren't asked to sympathise with these characters. We are only asked to watch these characters.And they ARE watchable.One of the dizzying results of this lack of moral guideposts is that the only reason for sitting through the movie is to watch the images on the screen go through one change after another. In a sense, this is pure cinema. Tarantino allows himself no sentimental ploys with which to entice his audience -- he flies on image and sound and story alone. The characters speak with a bizarre directness -- there's no witty comebacks, no salacious double-entendres. These characters say what they mean and mean what they say. They tell you outright what they mean to do, and then they go ahead and do it. It's startling.This is not a movie many people will come out hooting and hollering with delight. It doesn't make you feel cool. It doesn't make you wish you could do that. It makes you glad you haven't pissed any of these people off, because this is a movie about bad people. Really bad people who for the most part come to really bad ends.One quibble I have (being a sword nerd) is with the very Chinese-looking swordwork -- this even with Sonny Chiba and his daughter on the credits as advisors. Oh well.Is Tarantino a genius or a hack?Genius, my friends. There's no question any more. He has made the world's most violent anti-violence film, an action film that makes you not want to be an action star, a blood-soaked epic without moral purpose, a revenge tale stripped of any and all trappings that are not purely cinema. No sentiment, no easy ways out, no good guys.You'll either love it or hate it. I didn't know which I did when I first walked out of the theatre, but in the hours since I can't stop thinking about what I saw and what it meant and how I feel about it. I like that.</blockquote>

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