Saw it and I must say that I was DISAPPOINTED!
It seemed to me like a crossover of anime and Sergio-Leone western (which were also inspired by Japanes Samurai stories) and this is not necessarily bad.
Technically the movie was great. Fabolously edited, great fight scenes, great camera guiding,...
BUT
there was too little dialogue IMHO which I had always considered one of the strong points of Tarantino's movies: The completely pointless yet entertaingin dialogues, like tipping the waitress in Reservoir Dogs or the hilarious dialogues during the Bonnie Situation in Pulp Fiction.
My second point of critic is: I was bored to death for the second half of the movie, because I figured it would end with Lucy Liu's death (I hadn't heard about that before, honestly) and the way the flick was going it was pretty obvious that Lucy Liu would die in a one-on-one battle once Uma Thurman had defeated enough of her goons. About the time I figured that out Tarantino just kept throwing goons into one and the same location and had Uma Thurman do - wonderfully choreographed - swordfighting for about 45 minutes. If I had wanted to see something like this I'd have gone to the ballet
I guess the film shouldn't have been cut in half and that the second part will give it a better ending. If the second part balances it out and gives us more story and more dialogue, I would not have complained about watching a 4 hour movie as much as I have now about the short one