Yesterday, Netflix brought me Kill Bill: Volume 1, and I watched it. I enjoyed it well-enough, and some bits were quite good, but my overall feeling was "Shouldn't a kung-fu/samurai/Hong Kong/spaghetti western/exploitation pastiche with scads of beautiful ass-kicking women be more, well, fun?" The action scenes, in particular, seemed to be lacking a certain panache. It sort of reminded me of the critique of De Sade as an erotic writer: De Sade, he said, thought that more of everything was better: more violated virgins, more sheep, more orgasms. It wasn't sex, it was arithmetic.

In the same way, the very long battle scene in the club/bar where The Bride takes on O-Ren Ishii's flunkies seemed to be constructed on very arithmetical principles: more goons to fight, more severed limbs, more gore. It was kind of dull.

Also, the repeated device of having people's heads or limbs being chopped off, producing big gouts of arterial spray, kept reminding me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Also, one particular character lives much too long after getting an arm severed - in real life, she would have bled to death quite quickly. I know that this is kung-fu/samurai/Hong Kong/spaghetti western/exploitation pastiche, and not CSI, and that it's hardly the only violation of the laws of physics, biology, or good sense committed in the movie. But it really bothered me for some reason.

I did enjoy the movie, and I'm going to watch volume 2. But I hope volume 2 somehow manages to be more fun.