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Poster (c) Miramax Pictures
Eleven years ago, a young man named Quentin Tarantino released his first film, Reservoir Dogs. It became a huge hit, and two years later he released Pulp Fiction. In 1997, he made his least acclaimed film, Jackie Brown. The long six year wait is over. Kill Bill: Volume One has been released into theaters with a great reception, and possible more violence than Pulp Fiction. Although I don’t know much about the man, I can guess that Tarantino is not a modern Hollywood director. As he was working on Kill Bill, he didn’t allow “squibs” to squirt fake blood, and he doesn’t cast the most famous Hollywood stars. Knowing this, I was surprised that he allowed Miramax to split this movie up into two parts in order to get twice the revenue. Of course, if this movie hadn’t been split into two, it probably would have been NC-17.
Uma Thurman isn’t a name that rolls off of the tongue, nor is it the first name you think of when you hear the word “actress”. That’s where Tarantino’s work comes in: having worked with her in Pulp Fiction, he knows her. Any mainstream actress would have not accepted, for it is “too hard of a part” to be a martial arts star. Thurman was perfect for her role as “The Bride”. She’s an assassin who has been in a coma for four years, brought there by the title character, Bill (David Carradine) and others, including O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox). She simply wants vengeance, for not only did they nearly kill her, but they also killed her unborn baby.
Put simply, Kill Bill is the most entertaining movie of the year. It’s not light and breezy, but it’s never boring and really keeps a smile on your face for most of the time. Tarantino goes from quick thrills to a heavy-handed sequence in the middle of the film, but the transition is smooth, which makes it bearable. The fight scenes were amazing. Uma Thurman doesn’t look like someone you would normally equate with “action star”, and that’s what makes her even better in her role. She plays it was fierceness and the right approach. She had the discipline to learn the complicated moves for all of her fights. They weren’t wanna-be kung-fu fights like in The Matrix, but real ones. There were barely any special effects for them, and they looked spectacular.
Of course, where would Tarantino be without controversy? The violence is much debated about, mainly for the cause of the two parts. Many, including me, say that the main reason that Kill Bill was split into two separate movies was to keep the MPAA rating for both as an R, instead of one NC-17 movie. The violence was gratuitous and extreme, constant throughout the movie, but it didn’t seem real in the least. I’ve seen much of the same in the Grand Theft Auto video games. All of the blood did look real, however, and made me believe that it was actual blood.
The cinematography, by Robert Richardson, is spectacular. He tries a variety of styles: quick, MTV-style cuts, long, three minutes takes, and views from every conceivable angle, and some inconceivable ones. Another factor I loved about Kill Bill was how it tried, and successfully, recaptured the cheesiness of the 70’s action movies Tarantino wanted to make this movie like. Although those movies didn’t shift around time like Tarantino does here, it had a low budget feel to it (like in the opening, before, and during the credits), and a plain feeling to it.
There were only two things I didn’t like about Kill Bill. First was how cheaply Tarantino tried to tone down the violence in a few scenes by either making the fight in black-and-white, or just having the silhouettes fight. The other was the ending. I wanted Kill Bill to go on longer, I enjoyed it so much. It left with such a cliffhanger ending, which revealed something shocking about The Bride, who, in 100 minutes and is actually a despicable person, I grew to like as a character. Other than that, if you can stomach it, go out right now to see Kill Bill.
Rated R for strong bloody violence, language, and some sexual content.
Review Date: October 10, 2003