HondaReport.com - Film Review: Don't Kill Bill yet; Vol. 1 was worth every cent

You think by now Quentin Tarantino would have stepped outside the lines of his own created universe to test new worlds, different galaxies and uncomfortable planets. In the years since Pulp Fiction rocked my world, I wondered, would he—or anyone—ever top such a combination of great writing, bizarre irony, over-the-top action and basic, gut-busting humor? The answer, of course, had been no, and after Kill Bill, the answer is still, positively, no. But damn, he still knows how to make a seamless pop movie like nobody else’s business. And I was ready to hammer this flick. It’s no Pulp, but it’s got a style of its own, if you don’t mind the sight of blood for two hours.

HondaReport.com Movie Review
Title: Kill Bill, Vol. 1
Pupule’s Rating: * * * ½ stars

MPPR Rating: R
Date of Viewing: Sunday, October 12, 2003
Location: Dole Cannery

By Paul Honda
Thursday, October 16, 2003

The Hype: With a six-year gap since his Tarantino’s last film, Kill Bill actually needed no hype. Of course, “marketing” is the American Way and major media jumped—or rather, pounced. Between talk shows and magazines, the hype quickly became overkill. Tarantino would succeed or fail to an extreme with that kind of publicity, deserved or not.

He didn’t help matters by showing up on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno quite sloshed and meandering. Was it a defensive mechanism in preparation for a bust in his fourth film? Could he really mold kung fu, anime and Uma Thurman (as the roundhouse kicking femme lead) while going $10 million over budget? Would splitting the material shot over nine months into two films prove worthwhile? The hype alone could make for a rather interesting documentary.

Strengths: Left to an average action film fan, Kill Bill would have been nothing more than a series of vignettes of mostly chicks fighting with hordes of stunt guys taking spills through glass windows and bamboo huts. Instead, Tarantino went to pains to bring us the background story with each “chapter” of the film, starting with Uma, i.e. Black Mamba. Tales of how each “villain” rose to prominence, even with a vivid, flowing anime segment to bring O-Ren’s tormented childhood to life, turned into a stroke of genius.

Though I’m not a huge fan of his other films, like Reservoir Dogs, it’s safe to say that Tarantino refuses to be that ordinary action fan. He pushes plots to the limit, sometimes overdoing the content. With Kill Bill, however, the separation between action and storylines flow well. Despite the obvious homage to various 1970s style filmmaking, the stories flow so well that I was spinning in a suspended sense of reality.

In other words, I was neither checking my watch (until late in the movie) nor was I cringing at the storybook-style break between chapters as each new character was introduced. The casting was solid, from Vivica A. Fox (as Vernita Green/Copperhead) to Liu (O-Ren Ishii/Cottonmouth) to Thurman. The soundtrack was on point, as well. I’m going to buy it soon and play it as much as I played my old Pulp track.

Weaknesses: That being said, there are a few holes in this script. The action moves quickly, rapidly and intensely, of course. That Tarantino did it without a plethora of bullets is a first. But a succession of amputations and spurting blood scenes got old real fast. Another so-so slice of plot called for a teenaged Japanese schoolgirl to be a killer, Go Go Yubari. Though Chiaki Kuriyama was mesmorizing and fun to watch as the sometimes demure, sometimes maniacal Go Go, the notion that some teenaged kid that skinny could pull off that kind of strength and skill is pushing the envelope.

Best Scene: It’s a tie for me. The appearance of Sonny Chiba as a sushi shop chef/samurai sword maker was a huge bonus to a film with otherwise staid characters. Chiba’s humor and haranguing with his shop partner was classic Japanese samurai show material I can remember from the old KIKU-TV days of the ‘70s. When Chiba invites Black Mamba upstairs to a modest attic that serves as a museum—almost like a shrine—for his babies, the swords. Those swords, what beauties! Tarantino captures the love Chiba, i.e. Hattori Hanzo, has for his swords with reverence and purity. Once Hanzo learns of Black Mamba’s mission to exact revenge from one of the swordmakers’ pupils—he knows it’s Bill—he hand-picks a sword and hands it to her. “If on this journey,” he says, subtitles whizzing by, “you encounter God, God will surely be cut.” Those words are certainly asking for trouble from the Almighty, but we get the point. And so do all of Black Mamba’s targets.

Another best scene comes later, when O-Ren Ishii settles a dispute in the conference room with one of her enemies within a yakuza family, but I won’t spoil that little shocker for you. Let’s just say, though I don’t find Liu to be the most attractive Asian woman I’ve ever seen, she sure knows how to throw a hissy fit.

Bonus view: Thurman’s most simple, yet poignant scene opened my eyes wide. With legs rendered weak and atrophied after four years in a coma, she kills two sadistic sickos and makes her way onto a wheelchair and down to the parking lot. The simple scene—Uma getting into the back seat of a truck without use of her legs—grabbed me. You have to see it carefully to believe it. Watch her eyes closely. It is the one scene in the film that could have easily been part of another entirely different tale and genre—and still just as powerful. She blurs the line between acting and reality so well, I wish there had been more meat in the dialogues for her, but well, there will be other films for her acting chops to shine.

Worst Scene: But when we arrive at the scene in a pseudo-geisha dance club, the homage gets to be a bit much. Not only do arms and legs get skewered by Black Mamba’s thick steel sword, she kills off all of the “Crazy 88” yakuza gang. (They’re all dressed in Reservoir Dog-ish black suits with ties.) Though the stuntwork and fighting are solid, through the black-and-white and color shots it gets old by the 15th dead guy (or was it a girl?), and that’s when I started to peek at my watch. The gushing “blood” that is clearly water is another homage by Tarantino, but after the fifth fountain of H20, I got the point. Thanks for the redundancy, QT.

Summary: I can always do without the action-first, decent story-second mentality of that genre, and on paper, I was wary about this latest Tarantino installment despite my liking of Pulp. But I must say this: I was surprised by the attention to detail in his homage. Sure, he would’ve had a much better movie by cutting his mass material into 112 minutes, but for what he put together—and what Uma suffered through—it was $8 well spent.

Am I looking forward to Volume II? You bet. Beyond the pure action-for-action’s-sake, there is a very pure impulse and instinct at work in Black Mamba. It does beg this question: What if she were driven not to exact violent revenge from her tormentors? What if she were motivated somehow to forgive them? Would that not be far more challenging than to merely lope off their heads? Of course, it would not make for an action film, but the possibilities of what Tarantino would do with a main character who eschews violence in favor—and search—of peace of soul and mind … that is the Tarantino film I’d love to see one day. It may take decades, but it could happen. I’m of the opinion that Q could revolutionize the action genre with that concept should he embrace it just once. After all, revenge is easy and grace is certainly not.

Discretionary notes: Do NOT bring any kid under 13, and I would hesitate to bring any teenager unless he or she really begged hard. It’s the kind of grotesque, violent swordfight movie that will give the uninitiated nightmares. There’s a fair amount of cussing and total lust for blood.