If there's one thing that defines Quentin Tarantino's approach to making movies, it's appropriating well-known, low-brow genres and transforming them into hyper-stylized versions of themselves. From the Hong Kong heroic bloodshed tropes of Reservoir Dogs to the grindhouse excesses of Death Proof, Tarantino wears his influences proudly on his sleeve. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the Kill Bill movies, a gleefully excessive tale of revenge which mashes up everything from anime and Hong Kong action to spaghetti Westerns and the classic revenge thriller. It's also one of his most effective homages, too, held together by a dynamic, no nonsense performance from Uma Thurman as "The Bride" (later revealed to Black Mamba) as she shoots and slices her way through wave after wave of enemies in the hunt for the eponymous head of the group of assassins. Tarantino's forays into genre pastiches can sometimes come across as a little schematic and disjointed (Inglorious Basterds is an example where tone sometimes veers wildly from one direction to another) but with Kill Bill the pacing is assured, while the action is some of the most entertaining from his entire career.
