Kill Bill-Vol. 1 
(2003)
review by Head Cheeze

Quentin Tarantino's been away a long time. A long, long time. Since 1997's phenomenally underappreciated Jackie Brown, Tarantino had been rumoured to be involved in a number of projects, including a proposed three part World War 2 franchise called Inglorious Bastards, and countless "dream" projects ranging from Star Wars to James Bond. Ultimately, the man whose become one of the most revered American directors, despite having made only three films, settled on Kill Bill, a hyper-kinetic throwback to the classic Shaw Brother's chop-sockey films of the 1970's. After more than three years of preparation, filming, and editing, Tarantino's martial arts epic was karate chopped in half, to be presented to us in two installments; Kill Bill Volumes one and two, respectively. When that decision was made I wasn't sure whether it was a shrewd marketing ploy, or a cautious approach to audience endurance. Now I know it was a little bit of both, with a touch of mercy on the side.

Kill Bill tells the story of The Bride (Thurman), a onetime member of the Deadly Viper Assasination Squad, who was beaten and left for dead by her former associates, and, for good measure, shot in the head by her former boss, Bill (Carradine, who we hear, but never see). The fact that this all took place on her wedding day, whilst pregnant with Bill's child, makes her vengeance a particularly bittersweet sort, as the bride awakens from a come four years later. After willing her atrophied limbs back into action, The Bride sets off on a mission to take down the Deadly Vipers, and, ultimately, Bill.

That's basically it. This is a very simple plot for a very simple film. The Bride simply wants to kill Bill, and, to do so, she must go through his henchmen, and Tarantino gives the lady her revenge in brutally unflinching fashion. To call Kill Bill a violent film would be akin to calling The English Patient slightly slow. Kill Bill is, perhaps, the most violent piece of mainstream cinema I've seen since Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Limbs and heads are sliced and diced with glorious fountains of gore literally spewing forth like geysers skyward. Listen as a blade slices through flesh for not only the tearing of steel through skin, but for the slightly delayed hiss of blood that sprays from every wound.

There's a massive fight scene (the film's best moment) in which the stock turns to black and white as if to tell us that what's coming is simply too bloody for colour. Tarantino barely manages to retain his R-rating with this technique, and employs an even more innovative method to dodge the censors during the origin of O-ren-Ishi (Liu). Her sordid backstory of murder, pedophelia, and violent retribution at the hands of a child pass under the radar of the MPAA thanks to clever use of animation and narration by Thurman. I guess the MPAA doesn't recognise "cartoon" violence and sexual deviancy as any sort of legitimate ratings offense.

I really wanted to love Kill Bill. I enjoyed it, and can't cast a definitive judgement until I see the film's second installment, but, as a stand-alone feature, it's lacking something. While I appreciate the great action sequences and innovative techniques Tarantino used to preserve his uber-violent vision, I missed the trademark snappy dialogue that has made the man's films so endearing.

There are a couple of moments, including a great scene with Sonny Chiba (reprising his Hattori Hanzo role from the Japanese series Kage no Gundan) and Thurman discussing the Japanese language while he verbally abuses his assistant, as well as an homage to Pulp Fiction during a lull in the battle between The Bride and Copperhead (Fox) in which Thurman does the "square" thing with her finger, but, ultimately, much of the dialogue is of the bad seventies action film variety. Sure, that's the point, I guess, seeing as how this is an homage to that genre, but I walked in expecting a Tarantino flick, and walked out feeling rather unsure...well...how to feel!

Now, all that aside, the film is still very entertaining, and I can't wait to see it in all of it's uncut glory when both chapters are merged together, but, until then, colour me a slightly disappointed.

Kill Bill Volume 1 lacks that Tarantino flair that made films like Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs instant classics. Perhaps, when it all comes together, Kill Bill may wipe it's sanguine stained floor with them all, but a six month intermission certainly won't help it's case.

Kill Bill-Vol. 1 
(2003)
review by Big McLargehuge

Anyone who’se ever asked me for a review of Ang Lee’s “masterpiece” Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (CTHD) is surprised that I can review/summarize the entire film up in three words: A kung-fu movie.

Kill Bill is also a kung-fu movie, but unlike the plot heavy CTHD, Kill Bill doesn’t pretend to be anything but. Tarantino signals this by opening Kill Bill with the 1970’s logo of Shaw Brother’s Studio, the kings of the Hong Kong kung-fu boom of the early 1970’s. (In Shawscope!)

Tarantino strips action cinema down to its very essence in this first half of his epic sword and kick fest. By ignoring virtually all the reality-based consequences of extreme and bloody violence like, say, law enforcement, and draws a world of extreme black and white.

There is a sharp side of the sword and a dull side of the sword, that’s it. Anything else, when placed in this context, is completely and totally unnecessary. Tarantino offers us an anti-hero, Black Mambo (Uma Thurman), and a group of villans for her to kill, O Ren Oshii/Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu), Eller Driver/California Mountain Snake (Daryl Hannah) Vernita Green/Copperhead (Viveca A. Fox), Budd/Sidewinder (Michael Madsen), and their leader Bill (David Carradine).

Black Mambo was originally part of the Viper Assassination Squad under the leadership of the elusive Bill, but for some reason they’ve turned on her, and while nine month’s pregnant and about to be married, the assassination squad attacks and kills everyone. Everyone, that is, except Black Mambo.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, cited after the Shaw logo as a Klingon proverb, sets the plot of the film. Black Mambo awakens from a coma four years later bent on savage revenge. All she needs to do is kill her way through her former colleagues until exacting her revenge on Bill himself. That is, if they don’t kill her first.

So far it seems kind of hard to sympathize with Black Mambo considering we know absolutely zero about her past. Tarantino solves this empathy problem in a novel way. He sets up that for the four years of her comatose existence a hospital orderly has pimped her unconscious body to anyone with $75 and 20 minutes.

That’s some harsh shit to lay on us, but it accomplishes the mission, it gives us an anchor for empathy. Were it one of us waking up to that reality you can bet your bottom dollar there would be some hell to pay.

Although we don’t know the orderly as anyone other than “Buck who likes to Fuck” we know enough to relish his death, and we can take that anger from the coma ward all the way through the film.

Needless to say Kill Bill offers a visual feast of relentless martial arts violence that pays homage to no less than the entire catalog of Shaw Brother’s flicks, Sonny Chiba’s Street Figher movies (he makes a scene stealing appearance in Kill Bill as a master swordmaker and sushi chef), the Lone Wolf and Cub flicks, Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Sanjuro, Sergio Leoni’s Man With No Name trilogy, Anime, and a whole host of other classic, foreign action cinema.

Tarantino bridges the gap between the old and new stars of Asian/Action cinema too, but hiring Sonny Chiba (1970’s), Gordon Lieu of the Master Killer films (1980’s), Michael Madsen of Reservoir Dogs (1990’s) and Chiaki Kuriyama of Battle Royale (2000’s) as a scene stealing 17 year old bodyguard and psychopathic nutcase.

Tarantino doesn’t ape these flicks, but embraces them and distills them all down to their very atomic essences and recombines them into an action masterpiece. We get the Japanese blood sprays, the Hong Kong emphasized movement sounds, the Italian music and wide shots, for a film that plays not like anything an American could ever produce but more like something I’d expect from the Japanese/Hong Kong new wave.

It works so amazingly well. Three sequences stand out from the rest of the film, the sushi-bar in Okinawa where Sonny Chiba and Black Mamba discuss Japanese pronunciation then swords, the origin of O Ren Ishii (a fantastic Anime segment done by studio I.G. Plus of Ghost in the Shell/Kai Doh Maru fame), and the final battle between Black Mambo and Cotton Mouth in a Zen Garden outside a restaurant.

Tarantino allows the action to flow with amazingly fluidity, this is thanks in part to fight choreography by Yuen Wo-Ping, and stunt choroegraphy by Keith Adams. Tarantino ignores the current trend of making action sequences unwatchable by flipping the camera around like he’s mid seizure, and instead, uses the Hong Kong model of wide action and crane shots that give us a good look at the scope of mayhem.

For example, a restaurant floor littered with limbless corpses and bleeding injured writhing in agony. Tarantino just lingers on it, and lingers on it, and lingers on it, all from a high balcony. It was an amazing sight.

Softening the impact of the incredible violence of Kill Bill are great sequences in black and white, and in one fantastic segment, silhouetted against a blue background. Add to that an absolutely perfect anime segment containing extreme violence that in no way would EVER make it to the screen as a “real film” and you can easily see how Tarantino pushed the boundaries of filmmaking. These sequences allow him much more freedom to skirt the overly conservative curmudgeons of the MPAA who, had Tarantino not shot these sequences in this manner, would have slapped Kill Bill with a deadly NC-17.

The acting is extremely good. Uma Thurman proves herself as a more than capable action star. Never has Bruce Lee’s yellow and white Game of Death jumsuit looked so good. Lucy Lui, who normally gives me a migrane, is also fantastic. Viveca A. Fox dies before she has to do any real acting...

The whole package is just great, and at 120 or so minutes, never ever feels overlong or tedious. Instead it made me curse Miramax for not releasing Tarantino’s original 4 hour epic as one film and instead
forcing me to wait until February 2004 to see how it all ends.

In a year of rather good action films, Kill Bill slices its way to the top of the heap.