| Kill Bill, Vol.1 |
| Posted on 20/10/03 at 05:47 by bluestu |
You either like Quentin Tarantino, or you hate him. By the mid 1990s, after the inspired debut duo of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, his stock was as high in Hollywood as any filmmaker's had ever been. Then his ubiquitousness began to count against him. Cameo after cameo in every weak indie film of the day, the uninspired Four Rooms, talking head spots on every film review show and South Bank Show special. Once the low-key and under-rated Jackie Brown was out of the way, he went away to dream it all up again...
It's been 6 years since Jackie Brown. Is Kill Bill worth the wait? You can bet your aunt on it, kemo sabe. You've probably read other reviews of the film. Most critics have went over the top on it's "lack of dialogue" and "poor characterisation". This, frankly, is horseshit. You don't get two hitmen talking about burgers and Amsterdam for 10 minutes. You don't get a table of gangsters gossiping about Madonna. What you do get is a good three quarters of the film establishing the background story, Uma Thurman's character "The Bride" and setting up the final, explosive fight sequence. The plot development, dialogue and characterisation is infinitely better than 99% of other Hollywood movies.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. If you don't know what the film is about, here's a heads up. Uma Thurman plays a character referred to only as "The Bride". (Bizarrely, any reference to her character's real name is blanked from the soundtrack). Four years ago she was a member of a select team of female assassins, a Fox Force Five if you will, called the Deadly Viper Squad. Until her wedding day, that is, when she and her unborn child were beaten, shot, and left for dead by her erstwhile colleagues, all at the orders of the squad's leader, David Carradine's unseen Bill. Fast forward to the present, and the Bride awakes from a coma in the most dangerous of circumstances in a scene not dissimilar to Butch and Marcellus Wallace's predicament at the hands of Zed in Pulp Fiction. (As with any Tarantino film there are any number of movie in-jokes. The difference this time is that he often references his own movies - a kitsch keyring replaces Jules' wallet, a character's brains plasterered over a rear windscreen, The Bride indicating a square using her fingers, the Sheriff from From Dusk Til Dawn, Red Apple cigarettes, black suits, the usual Tarantino spiel about coffee....)
Once back on her feet the Bride vows revenge against her would-be murderers. As is the norm with QT, the narrative flips back and forward in time, and we start with her showdown against the horny Vivica Fox's Vernita Green, apparently after she's already dealt with Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii. The loss of her child weighs heavy on the Bride, and much like that other classic female action hero, Ellen Ripley, she has a strong maternal streak, reserving the only displays of pity and tolerance in her bloodbath of revenge for any children caught in it's midst.
After travelling to Japan to have a special sword forged by a steelsmith played by Chop Socky veteran Sonny Chiba, the Bride is ready to rock. Wearing the yellow tracksuit to be worn by Bruce Lee in his final film, she seeks out O-Ren, now mistress of the Yakuza, Tokyo's criminal underworld. In a dizzying half hour the perspective switches from film to anime, from colour to black and white, from plan view to point of view. It's breathtaking stuff, and the fight against O-Ren's personal army, the Crazy 88, is the most bloodthirsty and brilliantly choreographed fight scene you'll ever see. No punches are pulled as characters lose limbs and great gouts of blood spurt like fountains. The action then switches from the visceral to the beatiful as The Bride takes on O-Ren in a snow-laden garden, in one of the most beautfully photographed scenes I think I've seen in ANY film. The final pay-off just leaves you gasping for more. Roll on February, and Volume 2. Especially as Carradine, Michael Madsen's Budd, and Darryl Hannah's Elle Driver all barely featured this time around.
At time the vilm verges on fetishism. The loving close ups of cold steel, knives and swords. The lingering camera on Uma and Vivica's asses in their fight sequence. Even stockings and orthopaedic shoes get the treatment. Rape, necrophilia, bitch-fights, it's all there. The spurting blood, especially, is almost pornographic in it's detail.
Another criticism of the film is that it is derivative, and shamelessly rips off Hong Kong cinema and the "classic" martial arts movies of the 1970s. I don't know if any of you have seen the likes of Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter, but let me tell you, we're not talking Citizen Kane here. If Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon can be seen as arthouse, there's no reason why Kill Bill can't be treated likewise. Sure it's derivative, sure it pays homage to it's forbearers, but that doesn't make it a bad movie. The cinematograpy, fight choreography, soundtrack, dialogue, they're all spot on. My only criticism would be that some of the "Tarantinoisms" are a little forced. The "Pussy Wagon" for instance, is dischordant with the rest of the film.
Anyways, enough of my yakking. Go see it, and go see it with an open mind. You'll be blown away. One word of warning, though. Don't see it with a coffee sitting on your lap. Twice in the first five minutes there are jump-out-of-your-seat moments to rival Ben Gardener's corpse in Jaws, and your correspondent nearly lost his testicles as a result...
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