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KILL BILL VOL 1
by Peter Sobczynski

October 10, 2003

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, Sonny Chiba and David Carradine. Rated R

There is a moment early on in Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited epic "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" that, although relatively innocuous on the surface, will probably serve as the dividing point between those who think that the film is an overhyped, plotless exercise in mindless gore and those who will look at it as a sort of Holy Grail of film geekdom. The moment is a bit of voice-over in which we learn that the brutal assassin Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) has reestablished herself as a suburban wife/mother who goes under the name of Jeanne Bell. For many in the audience, that name will mean absolutely nothing and those people will be the ones who will probably be cooler towards the next 90 minutes of mayhem. Hard-core film freaks, on the other hand, will recognize Jeanne Bell as the name of a 1970’s blaxsploitation actress-sort of a lesser Pam Grier-who appeared in such films as "TNT Jackson", "The Klansman" and "The Muthers" and will be elated at the first sense (actually second if you count the three title cards that open the film-do not walk in late under any circumstance) at just how deeply detailed Tarantino’s love letter to grindhouse cinema truly is.

For those deprived souls who have no idea what "grindhouse cinema" is, it is less a specific kind of film and more of a state of mind. They were the (usually) cheap exploitation films that flourished during the 1970’s in the days before their natural habitats (namely drive-ins and run-down theaters in urban areas-examples in Chicago would include such beloved palaces as the State-Lake, the Woods and the McVickers) and provided a lurid alternative to mainstream fare. Grindhouse films hewed to no specific genre (they included biker films, slasher flicks, revenge melodramas, kung-fu epics, cheesy spaghetti westerns, gory horror extravaganzas and smutty soft-core comedies) or nationality (although they would be shoddily dubbed, there would be Japanese samurai epics and Italian horror movies, among others, mixed in with homegrown efforts). The common denominators they shared were heavy doses of action, violence and gore, smatterings of nudity and even a bit of humor (intentional or otherwise). Most importantly, even the silliest examples had a weird, headlong energy that kept jaded moviegoers glued to their seats if the gum/soda/unmentionable residue failed to do so. (After all, these filmmakers were facing the challenge of creating on-screen fights that would be more spectacular than the ones that would frequently break out in the balcony.)

In his grand pronouncements regarding "Kill Bill", Tarantino has claimed that his film is sort of a mega-grindhouse epic-a film that would somehow compress the entire genre into one (well, two) film. Astonishingly, he has managed to succeed in this effort-"Kill Bill" is more than simply a pastiche of half-remembered elements from the films seen during his clearly misspent youth. With this film, he manages to transcend homage and has made a genuinely great grindhouse film-the kind that the people who specialized in the genre might have come up with if they had access to the enormous resources that Tarantino had on hand.

The central plot of the film is so absurdly simple that it almost achieves a certain sense of purity. It opens on the bloodied ruins of a chapel where a wedding party has just been massacred. The only survivor is the pregnant bride (Uma Thurman), who lies wounded as a man stands over her to deliver a monologue about death and suffering. At the moment that the bride utters "It’s your baby", he fires a bullet into her head. (All this is done to a chilling-in-context rendition of "Bang Bang" by Nancy Sinatra. Eventually, we learn that the shooter was Bill (David Carradine), the organizer of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DIVAS) and the Bride was his deadliest killer. When she decided to leave the life after discovering she was pregnant, Bill gathered the other members-Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Sidewinder (Michael Madsen) and Vernita-to eliminate her. Instead of killing her, however, she winds up comatose in a hospital for 4 1/2 years, where a sleazy orderly (Michael Bowen) pimps her body out to truckers.

Of course, the Bride awakes and, after gorily dispatching the orderly and a trucker, she manages to escape from the hospital (all without the use of her temporarily useless legs) and forms a simple plan; she is going to kill all the DIVAS who wronged her-saving Bill for last. Achieving this goal requires, inevitably, a journey across the world. Her first stop is Okinawa, where she convinces a retired sword-maker (the legendary Sonny Chiba, whose presence in a film like this is the equivalent of making a Western and giving a bit role to John Wayne) to craft his ultimate weapon for her. From there, the Bride goes to Tokyo to confront O-Ren (whose gory past is recounted in a startling 11-minute anime sequence), who is now the head of the entire Japanese underworld, in a massive battle at her nightclub The House of Blue Leaves. (The ensuing battle, involving the Bride single-handedly taking on both O-Ren and seemingly hundreds of members of her personal army, the Crazy 88’s, is a twenty-minute ballet of brutality that is so over-the-top in its levels of gore and eye-popping violence-literally at one point-that even the most jaded gorehounds will be shocked and wondering how in the hell it managed to garner an "R" rating from the MPAA).

It sounds simple enough but Tarantino throws enough narrative twists and turns to make it more complex than it would appear to be. As usual for him, he once again monkeys with the time structure in intriguing ways-the battle with Vernita kicks off the film but chronologically comes after the fight with O-Ren-that forces viewers to pay closer attention. And there are the moments that Tarantino loves (like the car-cleaning in "Pulp Fiction") where the conventions of the movie world bump up against the real world surrounding them. It is easy enough, for example, for the Bride to plan to kill Vernita but how does one go about enacting long-planned vengeance against someone when their four-year-old daughter happens to be in the next room?

One element of Tarantino’s that isn’t on display in "Kill Bill" is his wonderfully flashy and creative dialogue-an omission that some have used to criticize the film. While I am an enormous fan of Tarantino’s flair for dialogue, I think that he made the correct decision to downplay that element here. The fact is-the films that he is paying tribute to never had much more than the most rudimentary bits of plot-forwarding dialogue (since most of these films were going to be dubbed anyway, they usually kept the speaking parts to a minimum) and to suddenly have all these characters popping off on verbal riffs would ruin the mood that he has created here. Besides, unlike his other films, which were as much about cinematic conventions as anything else, "Kill Bill" is a movie-movie; the kind that Clarence and Alabama might have seen on a first date or that Jules and Vincent might have discussed on their way to another job. And when a bit of prime Tarantino-speak floats to the surface (such as the hilariously unprintable remark that the sheriff makes when he discovers that the Bride isn’t quite dead), it is like a delicious little plum.

In all of his films as director, Tarantino has focused on a different aspect of storytelling. "Reservoir Dogs" showed that who the storyteller was could be more important than the story being told ("It’s the singer, not the song" as the Who once said.) and "Pulp Fiction" showed that even the most rudimentary stories could become complex depending on how it is approached. "Jackie Brown", his great, underrated follow-up to those films, lingered mostly on developing fully-established characters. With "Kill Bill", his focus is clearly on action and spectacle and he pulls it off spectacularly. With the aid of choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (best known in America for his work on "The Matrix") and the astonishing physical grace and presence of Uma Thurman (imagine Marlene Dietrich starring in "Enter the Dragon"), his fight scenes are as ferocious and freaky as those that inspired him in the first place.

Violent, funny and filled with so many film references-including homages to Dario Argento, Vicente Aranda, Brian De Palma and the Japanese cult shocker "Battle Royale" (whose Chiaki Kuriyama portrays O-Ren’s sweet-faced teen-schoolgirl bodyguard)-that it appears that Tarantino was trying to adapt "The Psychotronic Video Guide" into a feature film, "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" is the "One From the Heart" of violent revenge dramas-a film that tells an essentially simple story in such a wonderfully flashy fashion and Tarantino’s intoxication with the joys of movie magic, like Francis Coppola’s, is so giddy and contagious that the audience becomes as excited with watching it as he clearly was with making it. Sure, there are some people out there who will be put off by the sheer showiness of the material; such people can stick to the serious-minded ploddings of movies like "Mystic River" or "The Human Stain". True movie lovers, on the other hand, will doubtlessly fall in love with "Kill Bill" and even if they go in annoyed with Tarantino’s decision to split the film into two parts ("Vol. 2" is set for Feb. 20, 2004), they will be so exhilarated by the first half (which climaxes with a perfect cliffhanger) that they will eagerly begin counting the days until next February.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2003 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.