Replies

"An exercise in style"
A.O. Scott, NY TIMES on Kill Bill

"The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it."
A.O. Scott, NY TIMES on Passion

"It oozes, drips, flows, gushes, splatters and geysers in lush crimson to oily black. Scalps, limbs and heads are freely removed from characters' bodies."
"Make no mistake: The film is hugely watchable"
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter on Kill Bill

"...near-pornographic violence and concerns about its potential to incite anti-Semitism..."
"The Passion of the Christ is the work of a Christian traditonalist....takes the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as literal truth."
Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter on Passion

"Untold severed limbs spray gushers of blood so copiously you can't help but laugh."
"Kill Bill -- through sheer audacity and the brio spilling off the screen -- turns out to be an event. I've never seen anything like it."
"'Kill Bill' goes for the thrill"
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle, on Kill Bill

"Gibson's obsessive need to zoom in and linger on bloodletting, although this makes it difficult to watch. It's awful..everything he knows about storytelling has been swept aside by proselytizing zeal."
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle, on Passion

Where in any of those reviews of "Kill Bill" do you find support for the view that "they only approve of violence when it's gratuitous and totally pointless", as Spok claimed?

While there's no doubt that some reviewers will find certain uses of violence in film to be done more successfully than others, that doesn't help support the original claim unless one can find an example of a reviewer lauding a particular use of violence in a film precisely *because* it's "gratuitous and totally pointless".