Like most of Tarantino’s films, Kill Bill, vol. 1 is a sensory assault. From the volume of the very eclectic soundtrack to the overwrought sprays of blood that accompany each and every one of the many amputations and beheadings, and there are so very many. Despite all this, the film fails to deliver on its many over-hyped promises.
Kill Bill is, ostensibly, the story of The Bride (Uma Thurman), whose real name is oh so cleverly bleeped out, who awakens four years after being shot in the head and left for dead by Bill and the DiVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) which, oddly, includes a man (Michael Madsen). The Bride’s quest for revenge takes her first to Okinawa where she secures a custom-made samurai sword by convincing the world’s best sword maker to break his 20+ year-old oath to never again make something that kills people.
First on The Bride’s hit list is O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), now head of the Tokyo underworld, despite her mixed Japanese-Chinese-American heritage. Since it is, in fact, the climax of the film it shouldn’t be a shock that the best, and most bloody, sequence involves O-Ren’s “gang of 88” defending their mistress against The Bride. The nearly identical warriors, all sporting Kato’s black mask from The Green Hornet, rush with such force and glee to the center of the dance floor in the restaurant that is the setting for the film’s final set piece that the bloodletting that follows is anti-climatic. There is never any doubt that The Bride will prevail. After all, this is a woman who, thirteen hours after awakening from a four year coma, is strong enough to stand on her own. A woman who, without any money or identification manages a one-way, first-class ticket to Okinawa (odd that a man as obsessed with details as Tarantino would just gloss over such little, but important things. Did he think we’d not notice?)
This film has gotten a lot of press for many reasons: the reuniting of Tarantino and Thurman, the return of Tarantino to film after several years, the clever aping of a filmic style (the “grindhouse” movie) that was vastly overrated to begin with, the eclectic nature of the soundtrack, the fact that the production ran weeks over time, hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget, and the fact that what was supposed to be one, two-hour plus film turned out to be enough for two movies. Well, there’s a reason it turned out to be enough for two movies.
Despite the sensory onslaught of the music, the blood, the Hong Kong cinema style fight scenes, and the random piece of anime in the middle, this film is as slow as molasses in January. It’s matched in self-indulgence only by Natural Born Killers, the one difference being that Stone’s film was at least an attempt at social commentary, at pushing the envelope in terms of portraying “realistic” violence. Kill Bill is so far over the line that the violence, while shocking at first, numbs you quite quickly, and without any social commentary hook, or a single character with a depth of more than two inches, you’re left as a viewer with nothing to care about.
It is for this reason that I give it a one popcorn out of five. At $9 a pop, you expect more from someone with a reputation as big as Tarantino’s.
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