NOBODY thought Quentin Tarantino could measure up to, or much more, top himself. After all, this insanely brilliant man gave us Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, all or most of which sit comfortably in almost every self-respecting film buff’s ‘top ten’ lists. That is certainly a tough act to beat. But after six years of absence from Hollywood, he resurfaces and throws Kill Bill Volume 1 (Miramax) our way.
And it is obvious that Tarantino is still more than capable of pushingthe moviegoers’ buttons. Kill Bill Volume 1 shows him so effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique. This movie has everything that made him legend—it is killingly funny, wildly inventive, bloody as a gushing artery and heart-stoppingly beautiful. In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to the movies—the thrill you get from something down, dirty, and dangerous.
For one, the catch phrase shown on posters everywhere, “A roaring rampage of revenge” may strike most as extremely tacky—but seeing the film proves that it is that in its simplest sense.
Split into two volumes by Miramax in order to ensure that Tarantino’s vision would not be compromised (and presumably to sell more tickets), Kill Bill Volume 1 tells the first half of the sprawling story, which is quite simple at first glance. A retired female assassin, referred to as “The Bride/Black Mamba” (Uma Thurman), is attacked on her wedding day in El Paso, Texas leaving her soon-to-be husband and unborn child dead. Four years later, she wakes up from a coma and looks for revenge. Though her ultimate target is her former boss, Bill (David Carradine), it is quite clear that The Bride is saving the best for last. And before she can track him down, she must methodically take out the minions who ruined her life. Volume 1’s targets include Vernita Green/Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), and the heartless O-Ren Ishii/Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu). Using a blessed sword handmade by Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), The Bride begins her relentless assault.
The Bride’s mission to kill takes her to a quiet Pasadena suburb, and then to Okinawa and Tokyo in Japan.
The story is as simple as that. The interest and the hook to this movie is found only when this fact is ignored, and you start to concentrate on how amazing the choreography is, the stunning fight scenes Thurman had to train months for, and the colorful cinematography.
The detail in Kill Bill is very over-the-top, there are extremely violent actions such as heads and limbs being sliced and hacked off in full view. But while the seriousness of this is very real, the blood continuously spurting out very much isn’t. It is straight out of a comic book. And although this may sound—and indeed look—ridiculous, it adds to the stylistic and unique approach that Tarantino has gone for.
Fight scenes make about eight-tenths of this movie where Tarantino exploits every trick in the book—low motion, black-and-white, split screen, and yes, even animé—to further assault us with the sheer madness he created. Most impressive is the animé sequence, which made up the whole third chapter, detailing the life and origin of Japanese-Chinese-American Yakuza Queen, O-ren Ishii, played with ample madness by Lucy Liu.
Nobody would really look into Kill Bill and expect spectacular acting—more or less everybody’s just looking for camp—but what Thurman, Fox and Liu accomplish here is arguably more difficult than playing the nuanced heroine of a period epic.
Thurman is oozing with cool in this movie in her yellow-and-black leather ensemble and cool GBX sneakers. She may very well be the new female John Travolta. Her Black Mamba/The Bride sparkles with such mad passion that she gives off that rare glint—a mad killing machine the audience would root for. Fox and Liu were more than ample supports—Fox brings quiet menace to her Copperhead and Liu brings fire and feeling to O-ren.
And then there’s the “Crazy 88,” O-ren’s personal army. This is a crazy band of squawking and howling Japs, who, in the end all got either killed or dismembered by The Bride’s mighty samurai steel.
There’s this hilarious scene where Thurman wills her immobile feet to move by chanting “Wiggle your big toe.” She makes you flinch with the hurt in her face as she speaks with Green’s four-year-old daughter, remembering her own, and that quiet moment when Samurai-sword maker Hattori Hanzo presents her with her sword, a moment punctuated with the latter’s line, “This is finest sword. If in your journey you should encounter God, God will be cut.”
The final chapter of the film (not of the story; as there’s more in Volume 2) is a movie on its own. There’s a consecutive 45-minute fight sequence between the bride and the Crazy 88. It’s a fight scene for the ages, expertly choreographed by Tarantino and martial-arts adviser Yuen Wo-Ping, who outdoes his Matrix magic. Computers generated all those Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded. But the Yakuzas aren’t digital. They bleed. And it’s not all in fun. You can feel their pain.
Then follows the main event—The Bride versus O-ren Ishii in the House of Blue Leaves. The garden backdrop is your very typical Japanese martial arts scene, with lots of wooden structures, a majestic blue filtration, a serene water feature, and gently falling snow. The battle is fairly quick, which was surprising. Probably the only disappointment owing to the lack of plot is the audience’s failure to attach to any of the characters. Therefore, you do not care who wins or loses. Furthermore, you already know who wins this main fight because it’s already shown earlier in the story.
Apart from the visual flair, Kill Bill’s hook is also due to its excellent musical score. After the Prologue and into the first chapter, Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang, with its purple guitar strains and bittersweet lyric, firmly establishes a mood so indelible that the tune would ring to the audience’s collective ears for hours on end. The soundtrack is composed of funky Latin music with heavy bass lines to J-pop ditties by Japanese girl group “The 5,6,7,8’s”. Everything horn riff accentuating this movie is homage to 70’s kung-fu action pictures.
Kill Bill Volume 1 is definitely not a film for everybody. It got away with an R-rating for violence, which is totally befitting it. Needless to say, young children just might find this film cause for thousands of bucks worth of therapy in later life. Tarantino has yet again made a fun action picture that will satisfy a mainstream audience—presumably one willing to withstand an excessive amount of blood and gore for a Hollywood picture—and he’s also managed to indulge deeply into his fetish for samurai movies, grind house culture, animé, and who knows what else. Awards season is around the proverbial bend, and yet again we are left wondering if this Quentin Tarantino tour-de-force will be justly compensated. Remember his now classic Pulp Fiction? It was arguably the best movie of 1995, but it lost Oscar gold to Forrest Gump. But for now let us revel in the fact that Kill Bill Volume 1 is a kick-ass film, and obviously, Quentin Tarantino is here to stay. We should just wait and see. Ryan R. Reyes
