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KILL BILL: VOL 1 Send This Review to a Friend
There's no question that writer-director Quentin Tarantino knows how to grab our attention with style and overkill, and while his skill at making a movie is not in doubt, there is the matter of content. "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" does raise a basic question. What good is talent when applied to junk? Tarantino has made an ultra violent imitation samurai film, American-style, strewn with severed heads, limbs and torrents of spurting blood. Judging by initial box office draw, there are rivers of fans who lap up such violence, especially since he does it to some extent with tongue in cheek. But unless you get your kicks out of anything goes violent martial arts flicks, Tarantino's movie killing field is not for you. It isn't for me.
One has to recognize his stylistic success, using all sorts of techniques to keep eyes riveted, including Japanese-style animation, split screens, sudden switching to black and white, special effects, compellingly odd camera angles, and a lovely, snowy garden scene as the set piece for the ultimate slashing duel. He also casts beautiful Uma Thurman as the vengeful Bride and Lucy Liu as her target O-Ren, ruthless swords-woman and criminal commander. This is women's lib run wild, with women doing most of the lethal slicing, and Thurman leaving more dead and mutilated screamers in one sequence than I recall seeing inflicted by Toshiro Mifune in the Japanese traditional Japanese samurai flicks.
Tarantino goes for broke in his riff on such films, as if trying to do them one better. He also loves lavishing his camera on Thurman, whether on her face or feet. Scenes of utter brutality are leavened by smart-ass humor as The Bride runs down her list of people to slaughter in reprisal for ending her wedding day in a blood bath and leaving her for dead. She survives and after a long coma her first hit list killing is of a woman from the assassination squad after sending the woman's child into the next room.
Tarantino imbues the film with pretentiousness, as if he were making a great epic. But it really comes off like the work of a movie fan who never grew up and gets kicks out of seeing how violent he can be without making moviegoers sick. See a whole head lopped off. See the top of a head lopped off. See the blood spurting from where an arm had been severed. See the ladies battle to the death. And laugh while you cringe.
I've never believed in the rating system at all, but the fact that a rating board would most likely give an NC-17 rating to a film with an erect penis and some explicit sex action but only an R to a film with all this showy violence and bloodshed tells us something about our country. A Miramax release.
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