Miramax | Review by Dan Taylor
From
its opening credits – which surely
had grindhouse fans smiling broadly –
Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL VOLUME ONE
is nothing but a big, sloppy wet kiss to
the genres QT loves and adores: over-the-top
Hong King cinema, blood-soaked anime, dusty
Spaghetti westerns and good old action movies.
Filled with visual and audio
nods to martial arts revenge flicks and
gritty exploitation tales, KILL BILL offers
viewers a simple, straightforward tale:
The Bride (a pitch-perfect Uma Thurman)
is shot and left for dead – along with
everybody in attendance – on her wedding
day. The killers? Fellow members of an elite
assassination squad that's like the flip
side to CHARLIE'S
ANGELS or even FOX FORCE FIVE. To add
insult to injury, her boss and (we assume)
former lover Bill (an unseen David Carradine)
initiates and participates in the gruesome
attack.
Waking from a four year coma
– during which she endured rape, near
death and who knows what other indignities
– The Bride embarks on a mission that
can only be considered successful when her
revenge death list is complete. VOLUME ONE
chronicles the violence that ensues as she
tracks down and deals with Vernita Green
aka Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox) and the venomous
Yakuza queen O-Ren Ishi aka Cottonmouth
(Lucy Liu, who makes me want to take back
everything bad I ever said about her).
Edited and delivered in Tarantino's
trademark time-shifting fashion, KILL BILL
fills The Bride's story with globe-hopping
locales and an assortment of colorful characters
that help and hinder her quest to fulfill
her mission. Standout supporters include
chop sockey legend Sonny Chiba (THE
STREETFIGHTER series) as a legendary
sword-maker, and Chiaki Kuriyama (BATTLE
ROYALE) as Go-Go, the sinister schoolgirl/bodyguard
who wields one mean weapon.
In smaller roles – to
be fleshed out in VOLUME TWO – Darryl
Hannah gets the juices flowing as fellow
assassin Elle Driver, a sultry, eye-patched
killer who whistles Bernard Herrmann's theme
to TWISTED NERVE, while Bud (Michael Madsen)
seems at peace in the knowledge that The
Bride is coming and she's got one thing
on her mind.
Like PULP FICTION, KILL BILL
takes place in an alternate universe, this
time filled with assassination squads, airlines
that let you bring your samurai sword on
board, masked bodyguards and killers-turned-suburban-moms
(ala the underrated THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT).
The grindhouse ying to CROUCHING
TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON's arthouse yang,
KILL BILL VOLUME ONE concludes with a bloody
spectacular battle between Thurman's Bride
and Liu's "Crazy 88's," an army
of masked killers who meet their match in
an orgy of decapitations, amputations and
arterial sprays. Watching the on-screen
carnage, it's hard to imagine another major
American filmmaker getting away with this
sort of glorious B-movie.
