Kill Bill:
Volume 1
dir. Tarantino
Opens Fri Oct 10
Various Theaters
To me, Quentin Tarantino is an overrated movie geek who probably waits in line for every Star Wars movie dressed like Boba Fett. As a director and storyteller, he’s meticulously longwinded and needlessly profane. As an actor, he would be hard-pressed to act his way out of a dampened Kleenex. Reservoir Dogs? Not an inauspicious beginning. Pulp Fiction? Flashes of brilliance interrupted by long stretches of tedious horseshit. Jackie Brown? Any memory of this film has been erased from my brain long ago to make room for more interesting movies. THEREFORE: Quentin Tarantino is an occasionally interesting but ultimately flawed filmmaker who needs to be taken behind the woodshed and taught a thing or two about humility and entertaining an audience.
That said, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is freaking amazing, and I humbly apologize for any previously disrespectful statements.
Unlike the meandering plots of his previous films, Kill Bill is dead-on simple: Uma Thurman stars as “The Bride”–an assassin who’s shot in the noggin on her wedding day by a band of killers sent out by her former boss, Bill. Unfortunately for the prop masters who had to come up with a kajillion gallons of fake blood, The Bride didn’t die–and after snapping out of a coma, she commissions a samurai blade from a venerable sword-maker (Sonny Chiba) and sets off to slice and dice everyone who dared ruin her perfect day of wedded bliss. (J.LO would’ve been good in this role, too.)
And what a bloodbath it is! In one scene, The Bride takes on a gang called the “Crazy 88”–appropriately named because they are “crazy,” and there are 88 of ’em. And in one glorious black-and-white scene (filmed in such a way to avoid an X-rating; the rest of the film is in color), she mows down the entire throng. Limbs fly, heads roll, eyes are poked out, and an almost ceaseless fountain of blood squirts from each newly acquired stump.
It’s an amazingly choreographed (by Crouching Tiger‘s Yuen Woo-ping), and at turns, even beautiful, scene. But even this is eclipsed by the climactic face-off between The Bride and assassin O-Ren Ishi (Lucy Liu). In a crisp, snow-covered Japanese garden, as the two battle to the death, Tarantino shows his mastery of a cinematic trick I’ve never seen him use: silence. Eschewing his usual “fuck you, you fucking motherfuckers,” Tarantino choreographs absolute silence into the action, focusing momentarily on the sounds of running water, ringing blades, and falling snow. It’s a breathtaking scene, and proof that perhaps Tarantino has finally grown from self-absorbed enfant terrible into a fully realized artist.
Though the violence is overtly gratuitous, it’s still performed in a winky comic book style that belies the more serious meditation that lies beneath. After The Bride kills one assassin, she tells the dead woman’s young daughter, “If you’re still feeling raw when you grow up, it’s okay to come looking for me.” Revenge is transferred by blood and eventually through blood–a pretty thoughtful theme for a Tarantino movie. And one that makes me excited as hell for Kill Bill: Volume 2.
