Kill Bill - Volume One
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Movie Reviews of Kill Bill - Volume One
Movie Review: Tarantino, Uma, and a big samurai sword... what more do you need?
Summary: 5 Stars
How can half of a movie be supremely satisfying as a viewing experience? That's just one of the remarkable accomplishments of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1, a masterpiece of cinematic style. Volume 1 is merely half of a story, which has Uma Thurman chasing down the bad guys (and girls) who left her for dead, yet it was certainly the single most enjoyable, satisfying movie that I saw in 2003.
It's been over a decade since Tarantino blew us all away with Pulp Fiction, and in the time since we have probably forgotten just what a remarkable talent he is. In all that time we only had one film, 1997's Jackie Brown, an underrated gem that didn't cause a tenth of the stir that Pulp Fiction did. It failed to connect with a wide audience the way its predecessor did, probably due to the fact that it completely defied most expectations. To me, however, it was further proof that Tarantino was one of our best filmmakers. Now, Tarantino returns with two films that tell one story. Kill Bill, Volume 1 is the first part of the story featuring The Bride (Uma Thurman) tracking down and killing the criminals that left her (and her unborn child) for dead in a wedding chapel. That's the premise, but there is so much going on in this film, that descriptions just don't do it justice. Kill Bill was conceived as an homage to all of the flicks that Tarantino grew up watching: kung-fu films, samurai films, spaghetti westerns, crime dramas, action films, gangster films, Japanese anime, etc. He has taken all of those styles and created a big, delicious cinematic blend of styles and genres. This is quite simply a spectacular movie in every respect. Kill Bill is pure cinema, from the first frame to the last. Every shot is so infused with a love for the art of filmmaking that it can't help but rub off on the viewer. Every aspect of the film, cinematography, acting, editing, dialog, music, set design, is used flawlessly to its absolute potential. Every scene effectively conveys a different mood and brings to mind a different film genre, from Thurman's suburban fight with Vivica Fox to the awesome spectacle of the showdown in the House of Blue Leaves. Kill Bill demonstrates just what a filmmaker can do with inspiration and true passion for his material. It is a beautiful, beautiful film. As one critic eloquently stated, "It's the most gorgeous B-movie ever made." It also demonstrates how much can be achieved without computer animation. There might be some computer-generated or assisted imagery in Kill Bill, but it is absolutely minimal. Tarantino did everything retro style, including the amazing fight scenes. It's all just stuntmen on wires, no computers. He collaborated with Yeun Wo-Ping, the world-renowned choreographer who did the fight scenes in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The fight scenes are indeed spectacular. Tarantino reveals himself as a skilled action director. However, the film is not all action. It is heavy on back-story and characterization.
The film is accompanied by an amazing soundtrack, one of my all-time favorites. Starting with Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)", then launching into a wide variety of musical types. There are themes from the likes of Bernard Herrmann and Luis Bacalov, a Japanese ballad from Meiko Kaji, a rockabilly Charlie Feathers tune, Santa Esmeralda's disco-flamenco-rock cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and perhaps the piece that's used to the most stunning effect in the movie: Zamfir's The Lonely Shepherd". This one piece of music perfectly captures the feel of the film.
If you are like me and passionately love Quentin Tarantino, and movies and cinematic technique in general, this movie was made for you. It is a truly remarkable film that cinema lovers should treasure. Plus, it's a whole lot of fun too. Very few movies that are this well-crafted are this much fun to watch. Kill Bill (volumes 1 and 2) is a film for the ages, destined for immortality.
Movie Review: Vintage Tarantino
Summary: 5 Stars
Kill Bill is an ultra-violent rollercoaster ride of revenge, sword fights and B-movie martial arts trademarks. Quentin Tarantino has the unique ability to take old, hackneyed material and remold it into something original and exciting. He also has the knack for creating scenes that are filled with suspense, pathos and humor all at once without any of these qualities negating the others. There is a deadpan humor throughout this film, from the very first scene, when The Bride (Uma Thurman, whose character's name is not revealed) and an old enemy (Vivica A. Fox) fight to the death in the middle of a suburban house while the other woman's little girl arrives home in a school bus. The humor works because the characters themselves are unaware of it. Everything that happens is absurd, exaggerated and bizarre, yet the actors play it completely straight rather than winking at the audience as in some would-be clever films. Uma Thurman's performance is, of course, a crucial element that makes Kill Bill so effective. Her character is somewhat reminiscent of La Femme Nikita, who is also a beautiful and somber killing machine. The plot is simple and senseless. The Bride has been left for dead on her wedding day, her groom and the entire wedding party massacred by members of the Deadly Viper Assasination Squad, which is led by the never-seen Bill (David Carradine). The Bride is apparently a former member of this group, but the details are never elaborated. Exposition is deemed besides the point in this straight-ahead revenge saga. The Bride awakens from a coma four years later fixated on killing every member of this gang (which includes Daryl Hannah and Lucy Liu), Bill being the last; we'll have to wait for Volume ll to find out if she completes her mission. Kill Bill is highly stylized, with black and white and even animation used to accentuate the mayhem. The cinematography is exquisite throughout, from scenes of Tokyo to a Japanese garden with snow falling upon dueling swordswomen. There is an undercurrent of parody and an inherent silliness to the whole thing. In once scene, The Bride openly carries a deadly samurai sword on board a commercial airplane; I once had a tiny pocket knife confiscated by security (and this was before 9-11). In many kung fu movies the hero takes on many opponents at once, but The Bride takes this to new extremes when she fights every member of a group called the Crazy 88 all at once. We have to put aside any thoughts than in modern Tokyo at least some gangsters probably carry guns. Kill Bill is filled with references to other films and styles; I'm afraid many of the specific references went over my head and I had to read about them later. Despite the humor, exaggeration and self consciousness, this is not a cold film devoid of feeling. Alongside the absurdity is a sense of the tragic. Just as the humor is deadpan, emotion is kept just beneath the surface, but it's there all the same. The Bride's sense of loss is palpable throughout the film. In the already mentioned first scene you can see something verging on remorse on her face as she explains to the young girl why her mother has been killed. When The Bride asks a master swordmaker in Japan (Sonny Chiba, another of the film's great assets) to give her a sword to fulfill her mission, he at first refuses because he has vowed not to make any more instruments of killing. Now this is a very familiar movie cliche, but it is played perfectly straight-faced and, once again, a genuine sense of conflict comes across. I'm not sure how I feel about the movie being split into two parts; this was probably a marketing decision. Kill Bill, Volume l, true to form, ends on the kind of cliffhanger that verges on self-parody. This somewhat compensates for the inherently frustrating fact of having it end in the middle. Although I would have preferred to have it all in one piece, Volume l, regardless of how the sequel turns out, can stand alone as an extremely entertaining and accomplished film.Movie Review: Style more than content
Summary: 5 Stars
"Kill Bill" looks like a tongue in cheek Valentine's Day card to a whole range of sensationalistic and schlocky movies. There are homages to Blaxploitation movies, to Chinese kung fu and swordplay films, to samurai films, and to Japanese manga (or animation). The story doesn't seem all that important. It's certainly not complicated. On her wedding day a pregnant woman initially known as the Bride and later known as "Black Mamba" (played by Uma Thurman) is shot and left for dead by a group of assassins from the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad headed by Bill (David Carradine). After she awakens from a coma she resolves to get revenge on Bill and the assassins.
From that moment on "Kill Bill" is a simple revenge movie, of the kind that dominated Shaw Brothers output in the seventies. It's also an exercise in style that both admires and sends up the movies its based on.
Among the evil characters Black Mamba is coming up against a O-Ren Ishii/Cottonmouth (played by Lucy Liu), Elle Driver also known as California Mountain Snake (played by Daryl Hannah), Michael Madsen as Budd or Sidewinder, and Viveca A Fox as Vernita Green aka Copperhead.
We can't know what Tarantino's entire plan is until we see part two, but part one does show Tarantino at the peak of ihis craft. He manages to veer from tension to violence to humour from sequence to sequence. But to laugh, you need to be willing to take cartoon-like violence (quite literally in a cartoon at one point) and buckets and buckets of blood. There are also a lot of dismembered body parts flying around the screen. When heads get chopped off, blood spurts 10 feet up into the air like a fountain, in a completely unrealistic way.
Overall the movie is a masterful exercise in style, and a very knowing one. We're invited to stand back and look at it almost as an essay in the movies its quoting. In that sense it's almost like a Godard film.
Tarantino's much helped in all this by cinematographer Robert Richardson, who also shot Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers". Like Natural Born Killers, this one uses a lot of different techniques and looks, as well as some stunning camera movements. As it's a homage to 1970's exploitation movies the music on the soundtrack is mostly cheesy 1970's stuff.
But my main reservation about Tarantino, at least on the basis of his first two films., comes to the fore again. He's great at style, he's great at coolness, but he's really not so hot on presenting emotion or characters we can care about. Even the horrors that lead to the whole revenge scenario are underplayed stylistically, chopped up and rearranged so we're not too involved in them. That's one thing that's NOT like the movies he's quoting, where the original action that starts that course of revenge is usually shown graphically enough to tie our stomachs in knots and encourage us to root for the main characters.
Yuen Wo-ping is credited as Martial Arts Advisor rather than Martial Arts Choreographer, and I think there's a good reason for that. Often during action scenes on this kind of movie you feel that the director has taken a break while the martial arts guys do their stuff. Here, as on "Crouching Tiger" you feel that the director's maintained a lot of control over the fight scenes. Even in the fights, this is still a Quentin Tarantino movie. And what fights they are. Watching Kill Bill I realised that I often complain about the fights in Hong Kong movies going on so long you look at your watch. Here the fights go on even longer, and yet they are so clearly filmed, broken up so effectively by different filming techniques and location changes,that - for me at any rate - they never did seem too long.
I don't know how deep it's all going to turn out to be. But still I loved part one and can't wait for part two. It's terrific cinematic fun as you watch it, but it remains to be seen whether it's ultimately going to be movie fast food or a more satisfying meal.
Movie Review: You Don't F*** With The Bride!
Summary: 5 Stars
Initially, as you might now (probably not), The Kill Bill duo was pretty unimpressive in my eyes. I was definitely wrong about that one. While I still consider Vol 2 to be pretty boring and self-indulgent, Vol 1 has improved in my eyes mightily. Sure, the Kill Bill series contains quite a bit of fan service for the geeky comic book/roleplaying/wapanese crowd, but it's still mightily entertaining and fun, as most Tarantino works are. Kill Bill Vol 1 also is nicely paced, and although some of the dialogue is not rapidly paced and funny as some of his other works, it's dead serious and angry sounding (like revenge), but contains. That's pretty much the only obstacle that Pulp Fiction fanatics need to get over (as I intially was, though It's still one of the best movies ever). It's a slightly different taste, but it's still not entirely slow and contains some of his most fast paced action ever. It's still a Tarantino movie, and if you are fond of Tarantino movies you know what you are going to expect.
Tarantino's movies weren't known much for style beyond setting and camera, but Kill Bill kind of upped the ante a bit beyond those things. There's some slight split-screen used, highlighting sound effects, bits of CGI, a whole anime sequence, and a nice use of colors and such with the battle sequence. The settings, finally not being set firmly in LA (like his other works), allows for Tarantino to introduce some beautiful settings, and he does so with ease. The setting is further expanded by some pretty sunsets, use of lights, and many other aesthetics. The violence is even more stylized here then it was in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (I don't think Jackie Brown was stylized at all), with lot's of spraying blood galore, including blood that sprays out like a huge hose (in the anime, though). It's also super fast and energetic, some of the most energetic violence anywhere, and much better done than any of it's predecessors.
Kill Bill Vol 1 doesn't have much of a premise. After all, it's a simple revenge flick. Girl wakes up after being trying to be killed and decides to kill the man responsible. But a premise that is simple can be, and does, become more rich when you introduce characters and dialogue into the mix, and Tarantino is able to do both. Tarantino's expert dialogue and characters are probably what makes the movie have a use of it's 111 minute run time. During her journey to get revenge on BIll, there's hardly just Bill. The Bride makes sure the whole Deadly Viper Assassin Squad gets their maker. We get introduced to the many colorful characters, such as O-ren Ishi, backed up by her own personal bodyguard and a whole army of ninjas The characters are probably the only weak link in the movie, as some of them are pretty fan service for the comic book set out there (I hate stereotypes, but I've been around my share of these type of people. Yes, I have been part of the crowd, but not exactly quite like them).
Probably another thing that stands out for Kill Bill is the way that, while setting up itself for Vol 2, has a natural drop off point, so you don't feel like it's haphazardly being cut off. It's divided into chapters, and the storyline is slightly convoluted, but other than that, it's not too confusing. There are some who probably find the chapter division to be a (lame) excuse for criticism, but really though, nothing can be said for the way he tells the story.
Kill Bill Vol 1 is actually one of his priemiere films, and while it's not quite Pulp Fiction, it's balance of action, dialogue, speed and slow, and style makes this one a winner in my book. It's shame that I let it kind of pass by me. Guess I was a bit determined to hate it or something (being made of up some things I am not exactly liking of), or maybe the fact that it is attached to vol 2 (which kind of reminds me of his new movie).
A-
Movie Review: Hold on, wait a minute!
Summary: 5 Stars
Kill Bill isn't simply a stylistic tour de force, or Tarantino's satire of B movie genre's. If you believe that, that's fine, but you're wrong. If that's true then every other film that he has touched as a writer, director, or actor falls into the same bin and I don't think this is the case. There's a personal importance that he puts in there to mix it up. Example: in the commentary for the movie "True Romance" which he wrote but didn't direct he talks about a scene that two characters have and says that it's the most 'autobiographical ' scene he has ever written even though what they talk about is completely out of context with his life. In fact, he considers it to be his most personal film even though nothing in the film remotely happened to him. Now Kill Bill has all of the trappings in the simple genre's of film that he loves, mainly exploitation pictures, B movies, and Hong Kong action movies. Most people forget that he also likes movies that make you feel something genuine. He likes filmakers like Scorsese and Hawks who run gamut from brutal truth to good comedy. I believe that Tarantino is constantly running back and forth between these two mentalities and bridges them while buying time with his screwy time structure. Kill Bill isn't simply over the top to get laughs, grimaces, or applause in exclusive ways. I believe he wants all three simultaneously. Everyone who can withstand the violence will see notice the obvious movie universe that this film has. The main character can cure her partial paralysis in 14 hrs and learn to speak fluent Japanese in a matter of minutes because she directs all of her concentration to get one toe to move and because it's not about learning the language more as learning how the people think. Right! This is ridiculous, but the film is committed to this mindset and that throws most people into thinking that it's simply a stylistic movie. Tarantino is a true postmodern filmaker who likes to truly mix things up and he does that here. To those who pay attention he also advances the story while keeping the bloodflow coming rapidly. The plot points in the story are very simple: The Bride kills former colleagues one by one, however as the plot points move he adds a large amount of backstory and because we know this is only the first half we're not sure how to take some of it. That's something else entirely. I agree with Tarantino and Miramax's decision to split it up because the film has a relentless pace, but it's not interested in simple action payoffs and wants you to be into the story. The fight scenes contain realistic rests before the combatants go at it again and these ruin the idea that the film is just action by killing momentum and putting us into the heads of the fighters. Spaghetti westerns might be able to get away with three hour running times, but with lots of flashy cutting and story fragments coming here and there it can't sustain interest without a straightahead story told straight ahead. Splitting it into two makes it as accessible as possible. Also, the fighting techniques used in the film aren't new and have been used in far worse movies like "Matrix Reloaded" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" I say this because those two may have their merits, but they also took themselves too seriously and I believe that they misused the wire and digital techniques. One made them look beautiful in a puppetmaster kind of way, but useless as fight scenes and the other made them look absolutely cold and boring, while the fighting took the scenes nowhere in terms of plot. None of this is true of Kill Bill although I'm sure people will still complain. There's a lot of fighting and blood. If you're patient and attentive enough there's an engrossing story throughout, but with Tarantino you always get it in pieces. It also didn't hurt to see Michael Madsen in a role again, can't wait for Vol 2.