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Movies Forum Index » Movie Reviews Forum » Review: Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)
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| Author |
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| Jon Popick |
 Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 4:54 pm |
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Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com
"We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2003 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
First, let's put some of the rumors to bed: Quentin Tarantino always
envisioned Kill Bill as a two-volume opus - he just didn't spring the idea
on Miramax until things were nearly finished. Volume 1 actually lends itself
to an episodic setup better than, say, The Matrix Reloaded or either of the
first two Lord of the Rings pictures do. The reason it works is because
Tarantino breaks up his action - which covers a broad, Adaptation-like scope
of time and settings - into chapters, so the cliffhanger seems very natural.
Volume 1 speeds by in a taut 97 minutes (at least 10 of which are credits),
and, as pledged by Tarantino, is virtually non-stop action. Volume 2
promises more character development and substance (not to mention the name
of its main character, as well as a likely appearance by the guy she's
trying to kill), which makes it difficult to critique Volume 1. It's
anybody's guess how long Volume 2 will be, but since the two halves seem
like they'll be very different films, I don't have much problem with the
dual release (other than twice as much green lining Miramax's coffers, in
addition to shots at Oscars in two separate years). It sounds like it would
have been clunkier as one flick.
I didn't know much about Kill Bill, other than some of the casting and its
simple premise - a pregnant woman is shot and left for dead on her wedding
day but lives and tries to exact revenge on those responsible - but as the
opening credits unfurled, I got more and more excited. The Street Fighter's
Sonny Chiba (if you know True Romance, you know him) co-starring and
choreographing some fight scenes while Yuen Woo-ping (Crouching Tiger)
handled the rest? Photography from Robert Richardson, who won an Oscar for
JFK and shot the equally frenetic (not to mention Tarantino-penned) Natural
Born Killers? A score from Wu-Tang's RZA? Music and an appearance by
Japanese trash rockers The 5.6.7.8.s? Michael Parks returning as the From
Dusk Till Dawn sheriff? I could have gone home after the credits and been
happy just to have seen that collection of names following the super-cheesy
feature intros from the '70s.
But things got even better, starting with a tight black-and-white close-up
of Uma Thurman's bloody face as an unknown man attempts to clean her up
(hint: his handkerchief is monogrammed "Bob") before shooting her in the
head. Somewhere in there, Sonny & Cher's "Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down"
is played, but by this point, my head was spinning and my notebook had
fallen off my lap without me realizing it.
The rest of Volume 1 plays out in non-sequential chapters, showing Thurman's
character (we never learn her name - it's bleeped out whenever anyone
mentions it, making it kind of like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction) hunting
down her former associates, a group of hitmen called the Deadly Vipers
Assassination Squad (DiVAS). If you've seen the trailer, you already know
that The Bride (that's what we're supposed to call her for now) faces Lucy
Liu's Cottonmouth and Vivica A. Fox's Copperhead. Anyone suffering from
ophiciophobia will notice they're both named after snakes, as are the DiVAS
other two members, who are briefly seen and played by Michael Madsen and
Daryl Hannah.
If you're up on your Tarantino, you might recall the whole idea of a
five-member assassination squad from Fiction (remember Fox Force Five?),
which makes sense because Tarantino and Thurman came up with the loose idea
for Kill Bill's story while shooting Fiction. In Volume 1, we see The Bride
overcome the bullet to the head and subsequent four-year coma/partial
paralysis to hit up three different cities on three very different missions,
which generally involve gallons of blood, as well as flying heads and limbs
(one scene resembles the wide shot of casualties at the train depot from
Gone With the Wind).
A Wind homage may not have been Tarantino's intention, though he pays
tribute to so many other films, you'd need a doctorate in cinema with a
minor in pop culture references to catch it all. They include martial arts
epics like Game of Death and The Master of the Flying Guillotine, in
addition to Kaboom cereal, borderline necrophilia, Japanese anime, spaghetti
westerns and The Green Lantern. In other words, all things I dig, aside
from the anime (which is done really well), so take this review with a grain
of salt. Essentially, it's a mélange of the less sexual grindhouse films
Tarantino saw as an impressionable youth, and in keeping with his penchant
for resurrecting long-forgotten stars, here he attempts to revive Chiba and
David Carradine (the former reprises his television role of Hattori Hanzo,
while latter plays the titular Bill).
But Volume 1 is all about the action. Remember how ridiculously lame the
big fight scene between Neo and the thousand Agent Smiths in The Matrix
Reloaded looked? You won't get any of that here. There's no CG, and that
makes the fight scenes so much more satisfying. Tarantino does it all with
clever old-school camera tricks and editing, and a little wire fu, too.
Most of the battles involve knives or swords (holding true to Fox Force Five
dogma), and one 20-minute segment is so bloody, it's shown in black and
white.
And Volume 2? I can't wait.
1:37 - R for strong bloody violence, language and some sexual content
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X-RAMR-ID: 36044
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1205152
X-RT-TitleID: 1126182
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 9/10 |
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