I love cinema, so I don’t’ know why I don’t do these more often. Well, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is one of those movies you want to talk about.
It starts off with the quirkiest of humor, and then gets serious. After that, it’s a completely unpredictable ride… and an extremely violent one. Half the budget must have been fake blood, and it spurts with intentional ridiculousness near the end. This movie isn’t for everyone, but for the right, people, you’ll hardly find any movie as jammed pack with action and humor.
Well, half a movie. In a late decision, the movie was split in two with the second half coming out in February. This seems like a cheap ploy to make twice the money on the film, but, by the end of the first half, you’ll be so tired out from all the actiona an imagery thrown at you, you’ll be wanting a break– and I mean that in a good way.
The story can be summed up in one word: revenge. The movie is all style, and there’s no reason to dwell on the deeper meaning of it. And while there is a lot less dialogue in this film than the previous Tarantino films, the dialogue that is there is great. Better than the dialogue, though, is the action. It’s pretty much all martial arts and, of course, there is an extended samurai sword fight at the end. As for the realism, it’s more brutal than something like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and looks like the people are trying to really kill each other instead of just dance. Still, it’s pretty stylized at times, and the sword fight as too much “clang clang” to be like real samurai sword fighting. Unlike in the imported samurai flicks of old I’ve been watching where the evidence that someone is cut is just seeing the sword connect and hearing a yell, though, blood and limbs fly in this fight. After slaughtering like a hundred underlings, the final showdown between the heroine, The Bride, and one of the five on her death list, Cottonmouth, I thought was particularly well done as an aficionado of samurai sword fights.
BTW, you don’t even see his face in this first half, but the main villain, Bill, kicks ass. Apparently he’s an old fashioned killer, a regular cowboy/samurai) preferring a katana and a peacemaker (I may not have gone to some fancy film school, but let’s see Ebert identify a gun when the only view you get is the barrel pointed at the screen). From the little teasing we get of the character in this (mainly just his voice and seeing nothing more than his hand), I can’t wait to find out more about him in the second half of the movie. And, when the Bride finally gets her chance to kill Bill in February, it better be the actions sequence to end all action sequences to meet the hype carefully built in this first half. Four and a half out of five stars, and, for God’s sake, leave the kids at home.