Release Date: October 10, 2003
Starring: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Sonny Chiba, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Distributed by: Miramax Films
MPAA Rating: R (strong bloody violence, language, some sexual content)
Quentin Tarantino films are like Rorschach tests for moviegoers, and I think that Tarantino has realized this, because his Kill Bill Vol. 1 is more like a giant, cinematic inkblot (or is that blood-splatter?) than any of his other movies. You see what you want, and it says a lot about you as a moviegoer.
The average moviegoer, or even the well-informed moviegoer who has no taste for Tarantino's auteur cool, will probably see a bloody exhibition of kung fu and revenge, long on style but short on plot. It is told, as the title suggests, in book form, although this is mostly so that the director can use his favorite narrative device: episodic, almost anecdotal, storytelling.
The truth is that Kill Bill would not work as a book because it is more spectacle than story. The latter is an excuse for the former, but here it is anyway: A ruthless assassin, known only as The Bride (Uma Thurman), sets out on a mission of vengeance against her former associates, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by Bill (David Carradine, who is heard, though never seen, in this installment). Four years ago, they ruined The Bride's wedding day (among other things) by slaughtering all those present and leaving The Bride for dead, though in fact she was only comatose and has just now woken up.
Understandably, she is thirsty for payback, and she heads first to suburban Pasadena to eliminate Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), a reunion that takes the shape of a knife fight all over a beautifully decorated living room. Tarantino wastes no time in revealing his intentions, as bodies fly dramatically into (and through) curiously brittle furniture and blows are delivered with over-the-top sound effects added seemingly for the tongue-in-cheek fun of it: This is the director paying tribute to the Asian action films of the 1970's, sometimes called "chop-socky" pictures, though it is quite likely that many viewers will not have seen the material that Tarantino is lampooning.
Another hint is the presence of Sonny Chiba, a cult hero of a Japanese actor and martial arts expert made famous by the Street Fighter movies turned out in the early 1970's. In Vol. 1, he plays Hattori Hanzo, an Okinawa sword maker who turns up when The Bride escapes from a hospital and continues her mission of vengeance in the Far East.
Actually, it's not clear which parts of the movie come when. Tarantino is up to his old tricks, pausing frequently in the story to explain the origin of characters or past events that are important to the present. One of these interludes, the back-story of The Bride's Japanese nemesis, O-Ren Ishii (another assassin, also known as Cottonmouth, played by Lucy Liu), comes in the form of an extended anime sequence. At times it seems as though Tarantino is unsatisfied with film as a medium: he tells the story like he's reading an airport paperback and delves significantly into animation. And at times he seems unsatisfied with himself, yearning, as he always has been, to get back to the sharp dialogue and tight plotting he had in 1992's Reservoir Dogs.
Despite all the genre blending and medium switching, there is a refreshing similarity of style throughout Kill Bill. Tarantino, whatever his faults, is a director who never does anything halfway, and his decision to lovingly satire 1970's Asian actioners leads to a number of eye-popping sights. Like when characters, especially those of the unnamed henchmen variety, frequently get their limbs or digits hacked off, invariably producing an almost comical spray of blood. Or when the director times the fittingly retro soundtrack to the beats of his actors' steps.
Yes, Tarantino's martial arts homage wavers between a serene, dancelike tribute and an almost gory, splatterpunk orgy. This is never clearer than in the final scene of Vol. 1, when The Bride hacks and slashes her way through nearly a hundred of O-Ren Ishii's henchmen, a fantastic sequence that leaves the set literally covered in dead bodies, only to chase O-Ren outside into a garden that is being covered in a silent snowfall. The two take part in a measured, choreographed, rhythmic swordfight, timed to the clapping of a bamboo deer scare, that speaks to Tarantino's appreciation of not only the visceral pleasures of martial arts, but also of its spiritual qualities.
The movie ends shortly after this duel. As Tarantino fans will know, the director's original three-hour film was halved by the distributor, Miramax Films, to maximize profits, and as a result, moviegoers have been cheated out of a great movie. Unlike other serial installments of its day (the Lord of the Rings trilogy comes to mind), Kill Bill was not meant to stand as two separate parts, and there are moments when Vol. 1 is working in service of plot points that won't be seen until the second movie. Nevertheless, creative editing has saved what can be saved, and since, eventually, both movies will be available on the same DVD, it's worth giving the first Kill Bill the benefit of the doubt.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)