Kill Bill Volume 1 Recommended
The one thing that I have always liked about Quentin Tarantino films is that you really don’t know what to expect even though his first three films are quite similar. From the catchy dialogue of Tarantino’s
Reservoir Dogs to the excited mid point transition in Pulp Fiction Quentin Tarantino has mastered the art of non nonlinear storytelling as well getting his point to come across with as little spoken dialogue as possible. In the case of Tarantino’s
Kill Bill Volume 1 there are numerous scenes entirely spoken in Japanese and a whole 10 minute animated segment featuring as little spoken dialogue possible while using the visual scene to tell the story.
Kill Bill Volume 1 is written and directed by Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir
Dogs, Pulp Fiction) and co-written by Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction,
Gattaca) who happens to also be the star of Kill Bill. Thurman plays a Bride (Black Mamba) who is a deadly assassin who wakes up after four years in a coma to seek revenge on the five people who kill her unborn child and who also tried to kill her. The writing of
Kill Bill Volume 1 is interesting in that for most of the first hour of the film the story jumps from the past tense to the present tense back to the past tense and so on and so forth. In fact the whole final third of the film takes place in the past tense as Quentin Tarantino as mentioned before has demonstrated with Pulp Fiction
and Reservoir Dogs that he can make a non linear story line work and in the case of
Kill Bill it is his most complicated and ambitious effort so far.
Another trademark of Tarantino the he has mastered is the use music to score his films. With
Kill Bill each scene is carefully scored or tempted with the proper music for the mood and never seems to be overkill. From the very beginning Tarantino sets the mood of his film with the music during the opening credits which I usually fast forward through to get on with the film. With
Kill Bill Volume 1 I enjoyed watching the opening credits. Near the end of the film, Tarantino again uses the power of the music to strengthen the powerfulness of each scene and heightens the music further upon the exciting climax between Uma Thurman and Lucy Lui.
The casting by Tarantino’s of Uma Thurman as the Bride was good and the addition of Lucy Lui
(Charlie’s Angels) seemed perfectly suited for the role. The first part of the two part film does not include much of Michael Madsen
(The Getaway) but I am sure that he will have a much larger role in Volume 2 and David Carradine (Bill) has a minimal role in the first installment. The actress that stuck me the most was twenty year old Japanese actress Chiaki Kuriyama who was the most impressive actress in this film. She not only had the perfect look for the role but what she brought to each scene was achieve with almost no dialogue. .
The casting of Kill Bill which was well thought out leads to one of Kill Bill’s flaws, there is very little character development with Thurman’s character and we are not exactly sure why she was almost beaten to death to death in the first place. The lack of character development on Thurman’s character may be the result of the fact that the film is not complete and proper development may come in the next installment. Lucy Lui’s character was one of the only person’s of the film that was well developed.
Visually Kill Bill is rich and full of very well put together scenes with excellent fight choreography and great action sequences and the action in
Kill Bill was terrific. There is fighting from beginning to end with blood splattering here and blood splattering there and there are many limbs chopped off and even a head cut off. The one scene that I feel should have been removed in the editing process was when the Bride takes on the army of men after she has just disposed of the four or five or Lui’s henchmen. I thought that the film would have been stronger if Tarantino went immediately to the showdown with Thurman and Lucy Lui as the excessive fighting takes away from the credibility of the film. I am not sure if the fight in The Matrix Reloaded with Keanu Reeves and the hundreds of agents was worse or Thurman’s bloodbath in
Kill Bill.
I have not yet seen Kill Bill Volume 2 but Volume 1 has definitely stirred enough interest to finish off the story. Based on what I have scene so far,
Kill Bill Volume 1 is a better than average revenge film because it has Tarantino’s style written all over it and his style is well done. Of Tarantino’s previous film Kill Bill ranks third behind
Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs in that those two films were much deeper and stronger. One thing for bout Tarantino is that he is one of the better director’s in the film business today but that could be because he only selectively chooses when to make a film.
Runtime: 111 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 2:35.1
Miramax Pictures Releasing
Rated: R
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