| KILL BILL: VOLUME 1 |
 2003 - USADirector: Quentin Tarantino - Reviewed by Linda
Kill Bill, as you have most likely already heard, is one bloated movie that Miramax made Tarantino chop in half. So here we have Volume 1: The film opens with a disturbing and stark black and white sequence that basically shows a close-up assassination (read: bullet to the head) of a woman we come to know simply as The Bride (Uma Thurman). The pregnant Bride, we find out, had her wedding party crashed by some obvious bad-asses, leaving an unfortunate pile of corpses. But The Bride didn't die. She wakes up after four years in a coma, and seeks revenge. Yes. Revenge. There really isn't anything else you need to know, since Kill Bill is simply one long, super-violent and cartoonishly gory revenge flick. See The Bride seek out and kill her list of the five people that ruined her life: We've got O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), a Chinese-Japanese-American who has come to rule the yakuza underworld in Tokyo. Then there's Vernita Green (Viveca A. Fox) who is now a suburban mom who knows her way with a sharp blade. Daryl Hannah's Elle Driver (she looks like a drag-queen with an eyepatch) and Michael Madsen's Budd round out the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad (and will presumably feature more in Volume 2). Finally there is Bill (David Carradine, of TV's Kung Fu fame), who only appears off camera, as a sinister sort of Charlie to this pack of not-quite Angels. Bill is the mastermind, and, well, The Bride wants to kill him. See? Since Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction made such huge splashes on the pop culture landscape, Tarantino's smirky, quippy, pulpy style has been aped endless times. Watching Kill Bill Vol. 1, you can't help but notice that he now seems to be copying his own style, if that is possible. He makes his audiences feel clever for laughing at the deadpan banter, and highbrow for getting all of the relatively lowbrow-yet-sort-of-obscure references (anything from cheesy martial arts films, to exploitive anime, to spaghetti westerns are all blatantly referenced here). But Kill Bill is fun, and I'll bet Quentin's fans will love it. Kill Bill certainly looks great with fantastic colors, camera angles, and mismashed film styles (the violent history of O-Ren Ishii is done entirely in anime, and an excessively gory scene, with heads flying and blood spurting, is done in black and white). The cast is eye-catching, with hotties Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, and Viveca A. Fox kicking ASS with flattering outfits on. And though the dialogue isn't as sharp and non-stop as, say, Pulp Fiction, it IS funny. Though the film doesn't warrant a 42-page analysis in my book, and I'm not really chomping at the bit to see part two, Quentin could have done a lot worse than this swollen but entertaining opus. [Read Rachel's bitch-slap response to this review, with her opinion of Kill Bill: Vol.1.] |
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The press notes for The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino (as it is dubbed in the credits) are freakin' 42 pages long. 42 PAGES. Flipping through it, it is as though Quentin himself decided to dissect the hidden meanings, cultural references, and genre homages of his own film before anyone else had a chance. It reads like a college student's thesis, with more than a little bit of a self-reverential tone. I have to wonder, should a movie *need* 42 pages to explain what is going on? Especially one as fluffy and intentionally pop-culture packed as Kill Bill? Discuss amongst yourselves.
