Kill Bill: chick flick?

Dave Winer writes:

Last year on this day I wondered why Kill Bill I & II aren’t the ultimate chick revenge movies, like Thelma and Louise. A year later, I still don’t get it.

Yes, I remember that. I remember rolling my eyes then; they’re rolling again now.

I started to draft a response back then but never got around to posting it. It would seem that, like Dave, my opinion hasn’t changed much in the interim; so here it is:

Slightly disturbing: Dave’s repeated suggestion that Kill Bill is a “great chick movie”. *boggle* What sort of “chicks” does he hang out with? Kill Bill’s a violent misanthropic mess which revels in brutalising women.

Glib statements of bodycount rather miss the point: yes, many many men are briskly dispatched, but it is women’s pain and suffering (the heroine is shot, left for dead, and sexually molested while she’s in coma; beaten senseless and buried alive; need I go on?) that Tarantino’s camera lingers on long and lovingly.

Chick flick. Riiiight. Great date movie, too.