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| Kill Bill Volume 1 |
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  (9/10)
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Runtime: 110 |
| Public Rating: 9.17 (814 votes) |
Director: Quentin Tarantino |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: action/comedy/crime/thriller |
Year: 2003 |
| Writer(s): Quentin Tarantino |
| Distributor: Miramax |
| Reviewed by: Avril Carruthers |
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Produced by Lawrence Bender, Harvey Weinstein & Bob Weinstein.
Starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A Fox, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kiriyama, Michael Jai White, Julie Dreyfus, Chia Hui Liu.
Kill Bill is a film-lovers’ film – particularly if you love old spaghetti westerns, kung fu movies, samurai movies and Japanese anime, each done exceptionally well. It’s a film which could not exist outside the world of pop cinema. It’s a film doing homage to and celebrating great action film genres with characters that are eternal icons immortalised on the screen. In its original form over three hours long, it has been split into two halves with quite different tones and narrative techniques.
Volume 1 is a thrilling action flick with Japanese martial arts: karate and kenjutsu. It employs acrobatics and Chinese wire techniques used in The Matrix and in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. One entire section is told in anime, another straight out of a western complete with sheriffs, Texan boots on wooden floorboards, and white hats. The truly remarkable thing is that none of these genres seem to conflict nor are they diluted in the mix, and that is because the essence of each genre is equally about justice and revenge and is so lovingly and evocatively captured. Tarantino knows exactly the images and sounds he wants us to see and hear, using the aesthetic qualities of each style as appropriate for the action to further the story in perfect coherence.
The brief opening studio identification is in the style of old Shaw Scope movies, scratched, patchy film and bad sound. Then, black screen and a gasping whimpering, a caption saying ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’ while in black and white the camera shows us Uma Thurman’s face, cut, bleeding and bruised. A male voice behind the camera asks her, ‘Do you find me sadistic?’ His handkerchief, monogrammed ‘Bill’ tenderly wipes blood from her face while she shudders, unable to move. He says, ‘There is nothing sadistic in my actions towards you’. She manages to say, ‘It’s your baby!’ at the same time as he shoots her in the head.
Then the titles and opening credits. Nancy Sinatra’s voice singing ‘Bang bang, you shot me down..’
It’s a classic revenge tale told in Tarantino’s own fashion. Uma Thurman (The Bride) plays an assassin whose entire wedding party is massacred by the elite group of Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS) to which she belongs. Miraculously, she survives in a coma for four years then awakens to exact her revenge for the murders of her fiancé and her unborn child. On her Death List are O-Ren Ishii, codenamed Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green/ Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), Elle Driver/California Mountain Snake (Daryl Hannah) and Budd/Sidewinder (Michael Madsen), and last, Bill (David Carradine), who trained and led them. The Bride’s codename was Black Mamba, Bill’s lover and deadliest of all.
The story is told in flashback segments, not always in sequence, always coming back to the Bride’s relentless search for the now scattered members of her old squad and the spectacular, blood-spraying confrontations that eventuate. There is incidental humour among the carnage, usually brought about by a code of honour that, for example, will not allow the Bride and Copperhead to continue their knife fight when the latter’s four year old daughter comes home from school – at least till she’s in her room. Another example is in the final sword fight scene in the House of Blue Leaves, when, already having killed or maimed the Crazy 88 Bodyguard Squad, the Bride deals with a ridiculously young Yakuza member (by spanking him with her samurai sword) and sends him home to his Momma. A brief interval, then there’s an explosion of more violence, all carefully orchestrated and choreographed, with bewilderingly fast action, decapitations and amputations interspersed with slow motion (free of digital SFX) and spots where the action stops for a beat to frame a particularly impactful image – à la Bruce Lee.
There’s a superb segment where the Bride engages the assistance of legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzo (played by equally legendary Japanese swordmaster Shinichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, from the series Shadow Warriors and the Streetfighter films of the 1970s). It’s a matter of honour and responsibility, for Bill was his student. Lovers of the samurai film genre will not be disappointed in the still, disciplined posture of the samurai in his robes, the perfection and certainty of his decisive moves, his wonderful voice as deeply pitched and dark as a well, nor in the way the sword sings when pulled from its sheath.
The anime section is a haunting relating of how O-Ren Ishii evolved to be the cold deadly killer she is. By the animation studio Production I.G. which was responsible for, among others, Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), Tarantino’s carefully story-boarded anime is undoubtedly in his own style, yet true to the genre. It’s astonishingly touching and powerfully affecting in showing how the traumatised child grew to wreak her own revenge.
The final 20 minute fight scene is utterly mindblowing. Entitled Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves, it’s where the Bride, dressed in the identical yellow biker leathers Bruce Lee wore in his unfinished Fist of Fury and wielding her deadly sword, matches the countless, Kato-masked opponents who surround her. Now boss-of-bosses of the Yakuza, O-Ren Ishii has a personal bodyguard who is another iconic figure destined for cult status. Gogo Yubari, 17-year-old Japanese schoolgirl killer (dressed in school uniform) is played with vicious intent by Chiaki Kuriyama, last seen in cult classic Battle Royale. Her weapon is a whole new classification of deadly and she wields it with the glinting eye of a cool professional.
The last deadly encounter is between the Bride and O-Ren Ishii. A Japanese snow garden at night, a bamboo water device trickling in the foreground and the sword wielding figures behind. The images stay in the mind: blood on the snow, an intent, blood-flecked face and a gleaming sword in the moonlight.
Without doubt Tarantino’s art is a gourmet delight of intensely aesthetic imagery and music. It’s cinema for its own pleasurable sake and perhaps indulgent, in that sense. There are few lessons you will learn or take away in which to reflect your own life, although you will certainly be transported into this other world without any anchor back to the real.
The wonderful gift Tarantino passes to us from his own extraordinary vision is that as we leave the cinema we come out with an enhanced visual sense. Colours are brighter, contrasts more marked. We are more aware of the beauty of form and shape, a tree or a bridge silhouetted against the sky, sunlight reflecting on a building. And the music! This soundtrack will also be running through your head, along with a deepened appreciation and enjoyment.
© Avril Carruthers 8th October 2003
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