(2003)
Action: USA: 129 minutes: English
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: UMA THURMAN - "The Bride", LUCY LIU - O-Ren Ishii, DARYL HANNAH - Elle Driver, VIVICA A. FOX – Vernita, CHIAKI KURIYAMA - Go Go Yubari
http://killbill.com
Available on VCD and now playing internationally.
Reviewing a Tarantino film is usually a bit like reviewing the Holy Bible as an atheist critic, but the editorial staff at WAVE tells me "somebody's gotta do it." So bear with me, and please remember, I do believe in God. All of them.
Putting his fourth feature directorial debut aside for just a minute, Quentin Tarantino, or QT, is an amazing icon amid Hollywood's murky iconology: born in 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, Tarantino was named after a TV show character, the half-breed blacksmith "Quint" played by Burt Reynolds on Gunsmoke.
When he was two, the future filmmaker's single mom moved him to the city of Torrance, just outside of Los Angeles, California, which was a mix of black and whites, and where he was exposed to a wide range of film and pop culture influences. Martial arts movies, for example, continued to play in black neighborhoods of LA long after the Kung Fu fad ended elsewhere in America.
At 17, he quit school to take acting classes and support himself with odd jobs. At 22, he found a second home of sorts at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, where his then voluminous knowledge of old movies served him well. With friends, Tarantino turned Video Archives into an impromptu and very successful film school. He began writing film scripts as a way to supply practice scenes for the acting classes he began to teach.
In 1991, he wrote a script for what was intended to be a low-budget film on the scale of Clerks or The Blair Witch Project. But Reservoir Dogs was miraculously funded by Harvey Keitel after a friend of Tarantino's had passed on the script. The film went big budget and starred the likes of Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and even QT himself. After the international success of this film, QT was "hot" and immediately sold two other scripts he had written to hungry Hollywood moguls - the basis for blockbusters True Romance and Natural Born Killers.
All three movies made lots and lots of moolah. Overnight QT became Hollywood's new golden boy. And after winning a screenplay Oscar in 1995 for Pulp Fiction (as well as reviving John Travolta from has-been disco dancer to action hero figure) QT had become a God with a capital Hollywood "G." During the filming of Pulp, which starred sexy seductress Uma Thurman, QT began creating a script for a new film that would also star Uma, and have her play a revenge-bent action-heroine whose film wedding would be a blood-red one, where the entire wedding party would be assassinated, including her unborn baby, by characters who would later be hunted down by the surviving childless and pretty pissed off "almost a bride."
This interesting script sat on QT's to-do-list for years, until in late 2002 Kill Bill (Volume 1) went into production, with Uma as The Bride and paired with Lucy Lu as the opposing enemy in this segment of the trilogy (?) No one knows for sure how many more of these are planned. We find in the first production that the Deadly Viper Assignation Squad consists of a rather long list of sexy killers; with code names like Copperhead and Cottonmouth, and with the whole brood of sexy serpentines led by someone named Bill (voice of David Carradine). And the Bride is after each and every one of them, crossing off each revenge-based slaying one-by-one, saving the final fight scene of Volume 1 for Lucy Lu's character - O-Ren Ishii.
The fight scenes show QT's brilliance as the God of Hollywood Violence and Quirky Creativity. Anime scenes are cut in to better display arteries spraying blood after being hacked by samurai swords and to set up later "live-action" scenes where dismembered limbs spout blood like volcanoes gone mad. Special effects ala The Matrix and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon abound, as Uma dismembers hundreds of Japanese Mafia, looking like replicating Mr. Smiths of the Matrix breed, popping out of rice-paper walls atop Suzuki's, instead of banner-waving horses of last century's samurai. This is surely a movie inspired by the hundreds of martial arts films studied during QT's urban youth.
QT's offbeat humor is at its (un)godly best; example: in the opening fight scene, the action is stopped by a school bus delivering Vernita's grade-schooler to the house as the Bride and Vernita are caught red-handed in a knife-fight-to-the-finish. The combatants sheathe their arms as the child approaches the front door. "I'm not gonna murder you in front of your child" says The Bride. "Want some coffee…ya still take cream and sugar, right?" says Vernita. The coffee klatch eventually does not go very well, but anymore on that would be telling…
This sophisticated combination of offbeat humor and spectacular murder continue throughout the rest of the film, with each fight scene getting bloodier and more spectacle-packed. What really bothered me about this film, after overcoming my initial shock at NOT being drenched with blood from watching the DVD on my tiny little laptop, was that I was left wondering: What's really the point of it all? Who are these people? Could any of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad be one of my Italian relatives? Or better put - Who the hell is Bill and why is he such an evil dude?
I can understand the Bride's rage at being gunned down at her own wedding, losing her baby, then getting repeatedly raped while in a coma for 4 years afterwards, and then wanting to kill the real dad of her dead baby (through some murky dialog at the beginning of the film there is a hint that Bill is indeed the father of the unborn) but come on! We are led down this long road of revenge just to find out that the road is even longer, and we must come back for Volume 2 (or more) to answer the question: Who the hell is Bill? And is he really worth all this fuss? My guess is that he is, and that his real identity is Bill Gates, as we all know that's one truly evil dude.
THE BOTTOM LINE
A Must See for those who are really into gratuitous violence, knife fights between sexy women, and die-hard or wannabe Tarantino disciples. A Skip It if you pass out at the sight of your own blood, really want to see a love story, or are not motivated to pay homage (and rupees) to the God of Hollywood Violence and Quirky Creativity.
Reviewer's Bio:
Jiggy Gaton is Wave's movie reviewer who firmly believes that the pen is mightier than the sword - even mightier than the one that Uma uses to gut Lucy Lu. Jiggy loves to read reader's comments, and can be contacted by email: jigmeg@wlink.com.np Your thoughts on films showing or soon to be showing in Nepal are especially appreciated.
