This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer   

Sometimes, I think we take Quentin Tarantino's career for granted, in the sense that none of the great, violent spectacles were ever guaranteed. People forget that after the early career one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) that made Tarantino the Next Big Thing, his third feature, Jackie Brown (1997) landed with a thud. That movie has gotten more love in the intervening years, but it still feels like the least essential Tarantino movie (even though it's really, really good). By 2003, six years had passed, and you got the sense that Tarantino was in a make-or-break moment. His next movie had to recapture the magic of his early output, and it had to prove that Tarantino could use his unique method of blending hundreds of obscure film references into something that was wholly his own. The silly rhyming title Kill Bill did not inspire confidence. 

And then I saw the first installment six times in the theaters, taking a different friend every time: “You HAVE to see this movie!” It helped that I worked at a multiplex, so it was easy on my (non-existent) pocketbook. It also helped that I was 17 years old, and a bombastic kung-fu spectacle was exactly my jam at that moment in time. I still vividly remember how hard the six-month wait was between Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2. It ruled my life for a year in a way no other movie ever has. Watching the movies now is less of a pure id experience as it was when I was younger. 

The film has that early 2000s sheen that makes it look closer to his ‘90s movies than it does, say, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the movie feels more camp than ever before. It’s also got Uma Thurman at her most locked-in, giving the performance of her career as actors are wont to do in Tarantino movies. As stilted as the dialogue can be—intentional or not—Thurman plays it as serious as cancer, and that goes a long way toward earning gravitas that a script as openly silly as Kill Bill has no right to have.  

 I subsequently repeated my viewing regimen from Kill Bill: Volume 1 with Kill Bill: Volume 2. What’s most fascinating is seeing how these films evolved in my brain between 2004 and 2024. Volume 2 doesn’t have the same manic energy as Volume 1, which was a demerit upon my initial viewings but is now the reason why Volume 2 is so goddamn satisfying to watch. Tarantino fully hybridizes the kung fu flick and the western into a movie that has 8 of the 10 most memorable moments in The Whole Bloody Affair. 

While the House of Blue Leaves battle between Beatrix Kiddo and O-Ren Ishii's goons is pure spectacle, the best fight scene in all of Kill Bill has to be the one where Kiddo and fellow member of Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad member Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) beat the ever loving shit out of each other in Budd's (Michael Madsen) trailer. It's one of the greatest close-quarters fight scenes ever committed to film because it's so personal. Sure watching dozens of Ishii's goons get dispatched en masse is a bombastic martial arts gorefest, but I’ll take that trailer fight any day of the week. 

Action movies are all about escapism and so are Tarantino movies. For a few hours, you get to crawl around inside his infinitely weird head and come out the other side having been part of an experience. Seeing every subsequent Tarantino feature in the theaters felt the same way. It’s like you black out in there, and there’s a certain sadness having to return to the real world. It’s why I go out of my way to see every Tarantino movie in theaters more than once upon their initial release, which is shocking considering how few movies I get to see in the theaters in a given year. I’ll find literally any excuse to go back. It’s funny: I used to make fun of the kids in film school who worshiped at the altar of Pulp Fiction, but now I figure I’m the idiot because it took me so long to embrace good, not-so-clean fun at the movies. 

Kill Bill was Tarantino’s reminder to the world that his brain was worth hanging out in, and justice for all of us film nerds who have spent hours upon hours of our lives committing movies to memory. But it’s also a movie with sword fights, the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, and arterial sprays aplenty. It’s also a movie where people get buried alive, have their eyes plucked from their heads, and succumb to deadly vipers hidden in big bags of money. It’s as dumb as you want it to be or as clever as you want it to be, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter what side of the spectrum it falls on because you’re having too much fun.