Quentin Tarantino's first film in six years is a phenomenal success. The shades of anime, spaghetti cowboy, Japanese and Chinese martial arts and samurai influences combine brilliantly in the first installation of the two-part Kill Bill epic. Originally intended to be one movie, the 222-page script was split into two films during production. In an I-Film interview, Tarantino refers to how it ends after a twenty minute fight scene in the Tokyo night club and says, "after the first volume you're tired, you're ready for a break." I was frozen stiff to the point where only blood spewing from amputated appendages could grab my attention. The film is simply overwhelming.
Uma Thurman's character, "The Bride" is known by code name "Black Mamba" among an elite squad of professional killers known as the Deadly Viper Assassins. The Bride tries to leave the group and settle down with her husband and so that she can raise her children (she's pregnant) in peace. But things don't go as the Bride plans. The plot cuts in, in typical frantic Tarantino fashion, with a wedding-day massacre that leaves the Bride cruelly beaten and wounded with a bullet in her head. The man responsible for the attack is her former employer, Bill. Upon emerging from a four year coma, the Bride wastes no time in putting together a "Death List" setting off on her quest for revenge.
The Bride starts with Oren Ishii (Lucy Liu), the first in a series of brilliantly-developed, three-dimensional characters. Each entry on the Death List inspires genuine respect. You know the Bride has to kill them, but part of you doesn't want it to happen, or hopes it is delayed as long as possible. Go-Go, the 17-year-old sadistic bodyguard to Oren Ishii, is a great character, complete with a schoolgirl uniform and armed with a giant mace. Bill's character is featured very little but his presence lies ominously behind the story. With the reality Tarantino has created, you can't help but speculate about all that exists outside of what has been shown in the movie.
Divided into chapters, the story is conveyed in a streaming, reminiscing epic of pain and revenge. The movie is consistent with Tarantino's past cinematic personality of having his plots be very much character-driven. Other than that it's all over the place.
The dialogue varies from stiff monologues of honor, deceit and such, to subtitled bickering between Japanese men in a sushi bar. The settings swing from suburban Pasadena (driving in a neon pink "Pussy Wagon"), to the restaurants of Okinawa to El Paso, Tex., and eventually back to a Tokyo City night club.
The first confrontation of the Bride's past is with Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), "The Belle", with whom the Bride has her first fight: a dirty brawl with heavy falls, knife slashes, and a coffee break. The raw and dirty style Tarantino uses contrasts with the beautiful Oren Ishii fight so much that they could be from two different movies.
Only two of the Deadly Viper Assassins from The Bride's "Death List Five" are crossed off in Volume One, but the film is rife with death and murder. The blood literally comes in fountains, spewing from the openings of recently severed limbs.
I guess the main point is this: some people would get queasy seeing a living room cabinet of glass dumped on someone. It's possible that some people just wouldn't enjoy a 10 minute black and white battle montage beginning with an eyeball clutched in the Bride's fist. And to these people I say, "suck it up and see the damn movie!" Why? Because it's worth it for the story, and you'll be used to the violence by the end anyway.
If not for the amazing characters, beautiful fights, or incredible film technique, see Kill Bill for the soundtrack. Like other Tarantino films Kill Bill uses obscure tunes to rock the theater, very, very hard. Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" is the haunting opening credits song, the original theme, "Battle Without Honor Or Humanity" is as bad-ass as it was in the trailer.
So see Kill Bill, because the fight choreography is mind-boggling, the story is great and the chicks kick so much ass it frightens me.
