"Kill" - Joy
					There are some directors who just have an inimitable sense of style with their films. Frank Capra, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Stanley Kubrick all come to mind. Quentin Tarentino is another one of these directors even though he has made only four films. The “hipness” and maturity he displayed in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction is all back in Kill Bill: Volume One as are amazing fight scenes, all expertly choreographed and filmed. But once you get through the exorbitant, gleeful violence and fight scenes, there is nothing else because there is no there, there. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is part of an elite squad of killers led by the suave,
malevolent Bill of the title. When she tries to break away, the squad responds by simply massacring everyone in the wedding party including her unborn child. But the bride doesn’t die; she’s too strong. She goes into a coma and awakes four years later with the single purpose of killing the ones who did this to her.    Volume One covers her revenge against O-Ren “Cottonmouth” Ishi (Lucy Liu) and Vernita “Copperhead” Green (Vivica A. Fox) and is dominated by the fights between the two. The other two members of the team as well as Bill are left for Volume Two (coming out in February) thus destroying any kind of story arc the movie might have had. But more about that later. That’s pretty much what the movie is about; there’s not much more plot I can tell without giving too much away.    The fights are done in loving homage to two different styles of film. Copperhead’s is done a knife fight reminiscent of Italian “gialos” and the tension developed by the two women is impressive as they lunge at each other with such power. They know that their lives ride on every sweep of the knife. O-Ren’s battle is in the spirit of 70’s Japanese ninja/samurai films.  The Crazy 88 (O-Ren’s gang) fight lasts some thirty minutes and shows enough blood to fill Lake Michigan. These two fights are choreographed and shot beautifully. Though you’re pretty sure of the outcomes, there is a breezy freshness to the scenes that make them exhilarating to watch.    The style of the film is also quite intoxicating. From the beginning, when the credits roll in the style of a 70s movie, you know that this is not to be taken seriously. Correspondingly, there is a scene of the Crazy 88 gang led by O-Ren walking down a hallway that could almost be the epitome of cool. But it is hard to maintain coolness when a sequence shows the brutal death of a 10-year-old’s parents. It is difficult to make a joke out of an attempted rape. But Tarentino thinks it can be done and this is his downfall in Kill Bill. He wants to have his joke and be serious, too.    Tarentino tries to incorporate things other than action in Kill Bill but stumbles badly. A dialogue sequence between Vernita and the Bride that should be crackling is tired and sloppy. The excessive swearing that worked in Pulp Fiction seems lazy and careless here. I can’t really say anything about the acting because there isn’t any; it’s been sacrificed for style. Tarentino, in creating his style, has given up on everything else and we are left with the hollow shell that is Kill Bill.    Much has been made about the decision to split Kill Bill into two parts; it shouldn’t have been done. Simply put, the movie you see is not a whole one. The story arc is rudely interrupted. Miramax and Tarentino should have been able to turn these two movies into one three hour film. I don’t think it would have been that hard.    So is Kill Bill a success or failure? It is both. It is a brilliant homage to different genres and a cesspool of witless dialogue and emptiness. And while it is a triumph of style, it also effectively kills any respect I had for Tarentino. He is so clearly focused on his image and how cool everything is that he forgot about the point of making movies: to make a point. Where in Pulp Fiction there was enough substance to balance the style, there is no depth to the surface of Kill Bill.
		Grade: B-