Review: Kill Bill vol. 1

Uma Thurman plays The Bride, who wakes from a four year coma, gets out of the hospital, and sets about seeking revenge on her former Deadly Viper Assassination Squad cohorts (played by Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, and Michael Madsen) who crashed her wedding and murdered everyone in sight, leaving her for dead. Last on her hit list is former boss Bill (David Carradine), but this first part of the story focuses on her tracking down Vernita Green, AKA Copperhead (Fox), and O-Ren Ishii, AKA Cottonmouth (Liu). Chiaki Kuriyama plays O-Ren’s lethal and sadistic Number Two, GoGo Yubari, who wields a ball and chain! Sonny Chiba plays a legendary Japanese sword maker named Hattori Hanzo, Michael Bowen plays a repugnant hospital orderly who drives the now infamous Pussy Wagon, and Gordon Liu plays Johnny Mo, the leader of the Crazy 88s, O’Ren’s henchmen.

And here’s the point at which I started to become kind of a fan of Quentin Tarantino (“Reservoir Dogs”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Jackie Brown”). Boy did it take a long time, but yes in 2003 I finally found a QT film that I not only liked, but really, really liked. No one has a heroin overdose, and the in-jokes and cinephile references are so much the point of the whole thing that they don’t feel in any way inorganically shoe-horned into something. This whole film is QT’s love letter to Bruce Lee flicks and blaxploitation, and in doing this he has himself created a helluva entertaining martial arts film. Basically, it’s a standard revenge tale filtered through exploitation movie history. It’s his most ‘fun’ film to date, though the sequel is perhaps the more ‘mature’ and well-made film (subsequent films “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained” would supplant these two films as his best films to date, but I’d still argue “Kill Bill vol. 1” is more ‘fun’ to watch). Those not appreciative of the kinds of films that have inspired QT here will shrug their shoulders, but honestly, those people are seriously missing out. This is a blast, right from the retro ‘ShawScope’ trademark, and it never really lets up. It’s pure fun cinema for its own sake, but also really well-mounted. For me, the only flaw with the whole film isn’t that it’s been split into two films (They’re both stylistically so different that one long film would seem weird to me), but that QT has once again decided to tell the story out of sequence. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it does spoil some potential surprises.

 

Early on we get a fun, knock-down, drag-out fight between Uma Thurman (her best-ever work is in these two films) and Vivica A. Fox that is hilariously interrupted by the arrival of a school bus. The school bus, is the quirky QT touch to the typical cinematic fight. You won’t find that in any other fight scene! And it’s indicative of the whole film. Tarantino is showing his obvious love for exploitation films, but isn’t just throwing out references, he’s doing his own thing, too. And unlike previous films, the cinephile stuff seems organic to the film’s world. This is the film where Tarantino finally got all the pieces together, and has refined his cinematic vision. Having said that, spotting the reference/influence/musical cue is certainly a fun game to play here. In fact, there’s so much cinematic (and TV) history brought up here, that even in 2016, I only just realised that Fox plays a character who re-names herself Jeannie Bell, who is of course the star of the “Cleopatra Jones”-wannabe “TNT Jackson” (Though credit where it’s due, “Cleo” never performed a fight while topless. Points to “TNT Jackson” there!). Meanwhile, it’ll go over a lot of people’s heads, but The Bride’s sudden wake from a coma is a nice homage to the terrible Aussie psychic link flick “Patrick”. I was grinning from ear-to-ear when The Bride attempted to make her escape in the wonderfully labelled ‘Pussy Wagon’, and Isaac Hayes’ kick-arse theme song from “Truck Turner” started up. Cool stuff, for those in the know, and not distracting for those not in the know, I’d argue.

 

The film would be a whole lot lesser, however, if it weren’t for the amazingly strong performance by Uma Thurman. I’ve never been a fan, but here she brings a tricky balance of cheesy bad arsery/coolness and genuine emotion/drama, the latter of which you normally wouldn’t find in a martial arts epic. Anyone who thumbs their noses at what QT offers up in these two films, is just being unfair. There’s a real pain and sadness here (just witness her sobbing after awakening from a coma), with what The Bride has gone through, something that only gets more painful and sad as the story picks up in “vol. 2”. What it does is make us sympathise with The Bride very easily, not something one always finds with revenge-minded stories, especially those where the revenge-seeker seems slightly psychopathic in their dispensing of violence. We feel the deep, cellular-level hurt that has been felt by The Bride, and are 100% with her in her quest for revenge.

 

Tarantino shows off in the best way possible by giving each segment of the film its own style/vibe. The most audacious and interesting of these is the back-story of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), done in anime style, and accompanied by Ennio Morricone music lifted from a spaghetti western called “Days of Vengeance” (I haven’t seen the film, but knew instinctively that it was Morricone music. He’s that iconic. The theme from “Death Rides a Horse” is used later, too). It’s a completely outrageous segment that simply could not have been done in any other form than animation, or else the damn thing would get banned. It’s not hentai, but it is fucking gory as hell. The use of spaghetti western music for a film influenced largely by Eastern movies, is quite clever, really. It’s an East-meets-West kinda film, not to mention that several westerns were actually remakes of Japanese films. Tarantino knows exactly what he’s doing and he does it well. I keep using the word ‘fun’ here, and indeed it’s the sense of fun that I respond to most here. Without it, the violence and other adult content may not be as tolerable, or dare I say ‘fun’. I didn’t get that same sense from “Pulp Fiction” for instance, only in fits and starts. This one’s far more up my movie buff alley.

 

Aside from the anime segment, the action climax is stellar stuff. It’s bloody, and bloody fantastic as QT pays homage to (the frankly awful) “Game of Death” not only in The Bride’s choice of attire, but the series of boss fights, starting with the sociopathic GoGo (Chiaki Kuriyama), then the fantastic Gordon Liu and the Crazy 88s, and the big fight with O-Ren Ishii. It’s an awesome final third, where QT once again plays with stylistics, filming some of it in B&W, some in colour, and some in cool silhouette. It’s not just QT having fun, he’s also varying things up so we don’t get bored. It’s an exploitation film, but a heightened/improved one.

 

I mentioned Uma Thurman’s terrific performance earlier on, but she’s not the only interesting performer here. I might prefer her work in the next film, but Daryl Hannah’s enjoyably cold-blooded turn here is definitely worth singling out. I’m not sure where Michael Bowen has been of late, but he is hilariously sleazy in this as Buck, who rather enjoys coitus of the not terribly consensual kind. Best of all, however, is probably the legendary Sonny Chiba as a legendary sword-maker named Hattori Hanzo. Normally a stoic bad arse, he’s a bit goofy here and an absolute hoot. Meanwhile, that’s the awesome Gordon Liu (star of “36^th Chamber of Shaolin” and the awesome “Eight Diagram Pole Fighter”) in the Kato mask as the leader of the Crazy 88s. Like regular Tarantino actor Michael Parks, Liu turns up in a different (and bigger) role in the second film. This film also easily marks dead-eyed Lucy Liu’s best work to date as O-Ren. She’s terrific and sadistically funny.

 

If you deride this film as simple gory pastiche, I think a) You’re already predisposed to thumb your nose at exploitation films to begin with, and b) You’re dismissing the film through stubborn ignorance. This may be an exploitation film, but it’s a bloody well-made one in every respect, and with more emotional resonance involved than most. Sure, compared to “Django” it seems like surface-level entertainment (and hence my belief that “Django” is QT’s best film to date), but it’s a little deeper than many give it credit for. It’s also just a whole lot of ultra-violent fun. Obviously if you don’t like films filtered through cinematic references, you’re not going to like this film, but there’s much more than that to appreciate here. It’s made with obvious skill, well-acted by an entertaining and eclectic cast, and it signified for me an upward turn in Quentin Tarantino’s career (save the anomaly that is “Death Proof”). I dug it.

 

Rating: B+