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MOVIE REVIEW
Kill Bill: Volume
1
(2003)
Starring:
Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox,
Michael Madsen, Lucy Liu
Director:
Quentin Tarantino
Rating: R
Studio:
Miramax
Release Date: 10.10.03
Review
Posted: 10.10.03
Spoilers:
Minor
By
Sara M. Fetters
Bloody "Kill
Bill" a Kick in the Pants
Imitators
beware – the real deal has returned, and he’s brought Miss Uma
with him.
For those a
bit confused, I’m talking about the one and only Quentin
Tarantino, missing from the director’s chair since 1997’s
“Jackie Brown.” In that time, those that had not already spiked
and mimicked the director’s renowned and cynical
hipper-than-thou gangster chic style of cinema jumped on the
bandwagon in his absence, making any thought of another
crime-fueled trend-fest enough to send even the most
enthusiastic capper film junkie off the deep end. (For those
forced to endure travesties like “Who is Cletis Tout?” and
“Knockaround Guys,” you know exactly what I’m talking about.)
Now with the
chop-socky revenge epic “Kill Bill Vol. 1” Tarantino finally
returns to the movie house. And even if the film is a bloody,
violent mess that borders on incoherence, it’s still a
brilliant, bloody mess that energizes the spirit like few
pictures can. All in all, it’s good to have the king of the Big
Kahuna Burger back where he belongs: making movies.
So here’s the
rundown – Uma Thurman plays a mysterious figure known simply as
“The Bride.” Once upon a time, she worked for group called DiVAS,
the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, under the direction of a
mysterious ringleader named Bill (David Carradine). Code name
Black Mamaba, The Bride tries to leave Bill’s organization only
to be tracked down by the organization on the day of her
wedding. The entire party, including the priest and the
organist, are slaughtered, and Bill himself shoots a bullet deep
into the very pregnant Bride’s skull.
Fast-forward
four years. The Bride wakes up in a hospital coma center to
discover the orderly (Michael Bowen) has been auctioning off her
beautiful, doll-like body for sexual favors. Quickly disposing
of him, she confiscates his truck – garishly known as the “Pussy
Wagon” – and sets off on a single-minded quest for justice.
She’s going to kill every single member of the DiVAS,
Japanese/Chinese American O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), codename
Cottonmouth; soul sister Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), codename
Copperhead; down home cowboy Budd (Michael Madsen), codename
Sidewinder; and blonde one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah),
codenamed California Mountain Snake. But most of all, she’s
going to kill Bill. He just has to pay.
Well, that’s
it for plot. Somehow, Tarantino has enough stuff on that thin of
a premise to put together, not one, but two Asian-styled revenge
epics (“Vol. 2” comes out on February 20th of next
year). The question is, will audiences take to it all? “Vol. 1”
ends right in the middle with a cliff-hanging resolution right
out of an old-school Saturday matinee serial, and the movie is
so chock full of asides and references to ‘70’s style Far East
and Italian Spaghetti Western filmmaking that you almost have to
take a crash course in exploitation genre-ization to get them
all. Also missing this time around is Tarantino’s expressive and
exuberant knack for dialogue, the witty-repartee inherent in
every other script the director’s ever touched absent here.
Be that as it
may, what a spectacle it all is! Quentin has an obvious love and
respect for the genre, and somehow all the constant referencing
to the past doesn’t get in the way of the director creating his
own unique style and futuristic vision. Combining elements of
Sergio Leone, Kinji Fukasaku, Japanese Anime and television’s
“The Green Hornet,” “Vol. 1” is a spectacular hybrid creature
that exists in a surreal plane of cinema all its own. Quentin
has said that his prior films, “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction,”
“Brown” and the final segment of “Four Rooms,” are reality-based
movies filled with characters that just might be possible to
come across in everyday life. A heightened reality, to be sure,
but it’s still a world we recognize and feel as if we might be
able to take part in. “Vol. 1,” then, plays like a movie that a
character in one of his films might go see, an even more
heightened take on the reality that’s already pushed to the
extremes in the directors oeuvre.
Too be sure,
that is exactly how “Kill Bill Vol. 1” plays. I could
easily see Mr. Pink sitting down for a matinee showing of this
movie, laughing his ass off in the face of the constant gore and
geysers of blood. It’s a dazzling exercise. The wunderkind
director has fashioned something that works on a level inside
his own universe of films, yet still is entertaining and
accessible to those of us living in the real world.
There is so
much to love about “Vol. 1.” From the exquisite anime sequence
telling the tale of how O’Ren Ishi became the brutal assassin
she now is (crafted by the virtuoso animators behind classics
“Ghost in the Shell” and “Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade” and scored
to Luis Bocalov’s eerie music from 1972’s “The Grand Duel”), to
a splendidly giddy knife fight that kicks the movie off between
The Bride and Vernita, the sights and sounds of “Vol. 1” almost
pop off the screen. Good thing it’s only almost, though, for
Quentin really turns on the sprayer when it comes to the film’s
blood splattering. When severed arms started shooting out red
juices like they were sprung from a shower head, I was quickly
reminded of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s” Black Knight.
Like then, the blood is omnipresent, soaking everything and
everyone all around it.
It all
culminates in a twenty-plus minute segment entitled “Showdown at
the House of Blue Leaves.” It is a spectacular climax, a full
out brawl between the samurai sword wielding Bride and O’Ren’s
litany of brutal assassins. Cinematographer Bob Richardson
swoops in and around the event, taking it all in magnificently,
while Tarantino directs with a cocksure confidence that allows
the movie to just explode in radiant viciousness. In fact, this
moment is everything the highly touted Burly Brawl in “The
Matrix Reloaded” was supposed to be. I remarked then that the
much-hyped fight in the summer sequel couldn’t help but call
attention to itself, more impressive for its technical ingenuity
than for the fight itself. The showdown in “Vol. 1” doesn’t have
that problem at all. Sure the fight is technically astounding,
but it is also completely emotionally and viscerally immersive.
All of this
aside, it’s hard to wonder what the point is. It’s one thing to
adore the glories of Asian B-movie kung fu cinema, it is quite
another to craft a homage to it so rich and detail and nuance
that it approaches massive overkill. I’m also not quite sure I
like the standard set here by releasing “Kill Bill” in two
parts. While the conclusion in “Vol. 1” definitely hits the
spirit of serialized filmmaking of the past, it still reeks of a
snide commercialism used just to force us into spending twice as
much money for what is essentially one three-hour movie.
I’ll live
with it, though, if only for the glories of Chiaki Kuriyama (the
knife-wielding psychopath of “Battle Royale.” playing O’Ren’s
schoolgirl uniformed personal bodyguard Go Go Yubari), the
wickedly beautiful Julie Dreyfuss (the aptly named tri-lingual
Sophie Fatale), “Audition’s” willful Jun Kunimura (playing the
tragically headstrong Boss Tanaka) and the droopy-dog diligence
of Michael Parks (reprising the role of Texas Ranger Edgar
McGraw of “From Dusk ‘Till Dawn”). But most off all, there is
the great “Streetfighter” himself, Sonny Chiba, playing aging
sword-maker Hattori Hanzo. His scenes with Thurman hold a
luminescent transcendence that goes beyond “Vol. 1’s” meager
revenge-fueled tale, elevating the proceedings to a plane of
serene forcefulness much of the rest of the movie seems to lack.
Than there is
the stunning Thurman. She’s fast becoming Marlene Dietrich to
Quentin’s Josef Von Stermberg. The director shut production down
for almost an entire year to accommodate her pregnancy, much to
the consternation of the studio bosses at Miramax. Good thing he
did, for it is impossible to imagine “Kill Bill” without her,
Thurman born to play this vengeful wraith hell-bent on
retribution.
So is it
great cinema? Probably not, but I’m not really sure Tarantino
means it to be. “Kill Bill Vol. 1” is a major kick in the
pants, however, and a serious wake-up call to all those
imitators out there. The best thing you can say about any movie
is that it sticks with you long after leaving the theater. Days
later, “Kill Bill” refuses to let go, rolling around in the
psyche far past the normal expiration date of your average
Hollywood concoction.
Rating:
êêê
(out of 4)
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