Kill Bill: Vol. 1

[KLAXXON]

The Bride was once part of a group of top female assassins called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. When she realises that she's pregnant she decides to leave, assume a new identity and get married. This does not sit well with Bill, her former boss. On her wedding day, he along with the other members of the group attacks the wedding party leaving them for dead... The Bride awakes from being in a coma for five years and sets out to get her revenge...

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Tarantino is back with a vengeance. Literally! After six years, he's working on such a big scale that his new film had to be divided into two parts ... with a four-month break between release dates so we can catch our breath! This is an assured, thoroughly entertaining film that leaves us gasping for more.
It's the story of the Bride (Thurman), a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad who was betrayed by her colleagues and left for dead. Now after awaking from a four-year coma, she's compiled a revenge list, leading up to the top Viper Bill (Carradine). As one character says, "Revenge is never a straight line," and the tale is told out of sequence as the Bride first confronts fellow-Viper Vernita Green (Fox) at home in California and then ex-Viper O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), who's now a Tokyo yakuza boss. In between, we see the Bride's earlier awakening and her battle for survival, including a glimpse of another Viper, the one-eyed Elle Driver (Hannah).

Tarantino's obvious influence here is Chinese grindhouse cinema, those ultra-violent 1970s kung fu movies. But he also weaves in imagery, sounds and even emotion from Italian mafia movies, spaghetti Westerns and Japanese samurai epics. Interestingly, it all feels utterly seamless--these various elements blend together perfectly. And the characters are vivid enough to rise above his cinematic nerdiness! Thurman is shockingly good in the role, which is insanely physical but also powerfully raw and emotional. The other characters are less defined, but contribute to the overall texture, especially the multi-cultural aspect. Liu's O-Ren Ishii is especially interesting because of a gorgeously animated flashback that tells us how she became the ruthless killing machine she is. This makes her much more intriguing as a foe, and adds to her image as a Batman-type villain with a quirky persona, a groovy lair, a torturous past and masked minions galore (88 of them, to be precise).

In many ways this feels like the first real Tarantino film--it's such an amazing blend of old movie styles that his first three films seem almost quaint by comparison. He directs the film with a finesse and style that keep it looking great on screen while holding our interest even when things get horrifically violent. Yuen Woo-ping's fight choreography is fantastic--rough and desperate, edgy and inventive. The offbeat musical choices work wonderfully (Nancy Sinatra singing Sony Bono's Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down over the title credits is a stroke of genius). The only missteps are an inexplicable shift to black and white for the climactic moment and the fact that the film ends just as the story really gets going. But Tarantino even handles the cliffhanger with style and wit, dropping one last bit of vital information before he lets us go. For now.

"Kill or be killed." It's the dilemma facing The Bride, aka Black Mamba (aka Uma Thurman), in Kill Bill, and you just know which way she'll go. After all, it's a Quentin Tarantino flick. Six years after Jackie Brown, he delivers this savage fairytale guaranteed to blow you away. Accept no substitutes. Combining the balletic choreography of Hong Kong chop-socky with the operatic bombast of a spaghetti western (and throwing in a little Japanese animé), Tarantino elevates the B-movie to A-grade pop art - ripping off other people's films with inimitable style.

He deifies Uma Thurman as a McQueenesque icon of cool. Mesmerising, she sweeps across the Pacific to exterminate "the vermin" who gunned her down on her wedding day. They are The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, headed by Bill - played from the neck down by David Carradine. An ex-DiVA herself, she quit the racket to play happy families, only to wind up with a bullet in her melon.

"TANTRIC ORGY OF VIOLENCE"

But getting to Bill is a bloody business. Mercifully, Tarantino uses every artifice to remind you it's just a movie, folks! These visual twists include a scene of silhouetted swordplay that owes as much to the Hollywood musical as to the art of Bunraku (Japanese puppet theatre). Although he eschews the trademark street jive in favour of portentous samurai speak, the irony is laid on thick. It's plain from the super-kinetic opening sequence, when The Bride drops in on ex-cohort Vernita Green (Vivica A Fox) for a knife fight/coffee morning.

But The Bride's bullseye for Volume 1 is Viper-turned-crimelord O-Ren Ishi (Lucy Liu). The problem is the character doesn't warrant the importance Tarantino lends her. It's as if Liu's part was amped up in the cutting room to help shape what is essentially an incomplete story.

Volume 1 is merely a build-up, albeit an epic one. It's something like a Tantric orgy of violence that'll leave you panting, but holds back on a satisfying climax. Ultimately it's the episodic structure which allows Tarantino to just about get away with hacking the film in two. It works brilliantly as an anthology of killing, but by the final curtain you're left balanced precariously on a samurai sword's edge in breathless anticipation. And all you can do is kill time...

Uma Thurman ... The Bride
Lucy Liu ... O-Ren Ishii
Vivica A. Fox ... Vernita Green
Daryl Hannah ... Elle Driver
David Carradine ... Bill
Michael Madsen ... Budd
Julie Dreyfus ... Sofie Fatale
Chiaki Kuriyama ... Gogo Yubari
Sonny Chiba ... Hattori Hanzo
Chia Hui Liu ... Johnny Mo (as Gordon Liu)
Michael Parks ... Earl McGraw
Michael Bowen ... Buck
Jun Kunimura ... Boss Tanaka
Kenji Ohba ... Bald Guy (Sushi Shop) (as Kenji Oba)
Yuki Kazamatsuri ... Proprietor


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[Angelus]

my japanise is rusty :D