Review: Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

It's obvious from the opening frames of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1 that he has a deep, abiding love for the Hong Kong action flicks of the 1970s--Tarantino appropriates the Shaw Brothers' "ShawScope" logo, provoking knowing giggles from the audience members who are either old enough to know who the Shaw Brothers are (producers of numerous Kung Fu epics, including films starring Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan) or die-hard fans of the genre themselves.

And that love of impossibly high-flying kicks, swords drawn and brandished, and limbs severed and spurting carries all the way through this, the first of two parts. (Kill Bill was split in half after completion, supposedly for "artistic reasons"--three hours of martial arts violence might be too much for even the most ardent admirers of either Tarantino or the genre. There is precedence for such a release maneuver: Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler and Indian Epic were released in two parts; and, for more contemporary examples, look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the two Matrix sequels. I have the sneaking suspicion, though, that economics had more to do with it: with the back half of the film rumored to be even more gory than the front half, and thus almost certain to receive the dreaded NC-17 rating, Miramax may have decided to get their money up front with the first half, with anything they make on the second half becoming gravy.) But while Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is unquestionably an effective homage, is it anything more than that? And does it need to be?

Tarantino's previous directorial efforts all nodded toward their respective genres: heist dramas in Reservoir Dogs; film noir in Pulp Fiction; and Blaxploitation in Jackie Brown. But those movies weren't bound and gagged by genre limitations--they used film history as a springboard for storytelling and character development, not as an destination unto itself. Jackie Brown, in particular, played on the audiences' memory of African-American cinema of the 1970s--especially with the casting of Pam Grier, the lead actress in many of those movies--while going into greater depths of character and emotion and drawing career-best performances out of Grier (who should have been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar) and Robert Forster (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and lost) than one would expect given the limitations of the genre. (It probably didn't hurt that Jackie Brown was based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, either.)

Kill Bill, on the other hand, lovingly embraces its genre's limitations and tries to turn them into virtues.

Uma Thurman plays The Bride (she has a real name, but it's bleeped out for whatever stylistic reason), whose wedding party gets wiped out by her former partners in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad: O-Ren, the Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu); Elle, the California Mountain Snake (Darryl Hannah); Vernita, the Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox); Budd, the Sidewinder (Michael Madsen); and, of course, Bill, their leader (David Carradine). Bill shoots the pregnant Bride in the head and leaves her for dead at the alter, but that's not enough to keep her down--she awakens in a hospital bed four years later, a metal plate in her head and no baby in sight. Once awake, she sets out for revenge, picking off her former partners one by one in armed combat.

(In Vol. 1, only Fox and Liu are dealt with. Madsen and Hannah are seen only briefly, and Carradine not at all. But even though Carradine is never shown, his voice is the first we hear at the beginning and last we hear at the end--calm, confident, measured as if his words come out of his mouth carved in stone.)

And that's it. That's the plot. Thurman moves lithely from one confrontation to another, with a side trip to visit a master swordsmith (martial arts legend Sonny Chiba, in an effective cameo) and get a blade capable of cutting down her formidable foes.

In all of his previous films, Tarantino has shuffled the time frame around, shifting the order of events for greater effect or to provide views of the same event from different perspectives. Here, the time frame changes from scene to scene, sometimes from shot to shot, and the effect is disorienting. It calls attention to itself as a device rather than actually accomplishing anything in terms of storytelling. Also, Tarantino's signature verbal gymnastics are consipicuous by their absence. The dialog here comes in two flavors: Stilted and mannered, presumably in imitation of the ridiculously dubbed dialog from the movies he seeks to ape; and awkwardly foul-mouthed, like an inferior screenwriter trying to do a Quentin Tarantino impersonation. (The scene between Thurman and Fox after the movie's first fight scene is particularly bad.)

Tarantino even riffs on his own works. Some specific scenes recall moments from previous QT films--O-Ren giving a speech from atop a conference table echoes back to Honey Bunny's tabletop screaming at the beginning of Pulp Fiction, while a friend points out that the walk through the House of Blue Leaves is very Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino also uses actors from his previous movies, like Thurman (Pulp Fiction), Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), Michael Bowen (Jackie Brown) and Samuel L. Jackson (who has a cameo in Kill Bill, Vol. 2). Not that Tarantino is required to be original--most of Shakespeare's plays are based on previous sources, and scenes or dialog from one of his plays can echo scenes and dialog from others. And if QT is intentionally lifting images, music, even sound effects (like the leaping sound from Infra-Man when Thurman does a backflip in battle), then aren't scenes and actors from his previous movies fair game as well?

That doesn't mean that all of Tarantino's best tricks are used up. There are still pop culture references aplenty--from Pussy Wagon, the name of the car Thurman drives away from the hospital (taken from a particularly racy lyric in Grease), to the outfit Thurman wears when confronting O-Ren's bodyguards in the House of Blue Leaves (a replica of Bruce Lee's outfit from his last, uncompleted film, Game of Death), to quoting a Klingon proverb about revenge, Tarantino is still able to get laughs of recognition from the audience. Similarly, he also maintains his knack for putting the right song with the right image: Darryl Hannah sashays down a hospital corridor while whistling Bernard Hermann's "Twisted Nerve"; O-Ren and her posse glide through nightime Tokyo to Al Hirt's "Green Hornet Theme"; the slow walk down the hall of the House of Blue Leaves to Tomoyasu Hotei's "Battle Without Honor or Humanity"--all moments of unqualified cinematic beauty and brilliance, perhaps because they aren't intended to imitate anything, but instead take on personality all their own.

(Other song cues don't work nearly as well: The first time Tarantino uses a snipet of "The Ironside Theme" as a revenge horn, it gets a laugh, but when he uses the device a couple more times, it evokes only silence, if not groans.)

Then there are the fights scenes, which are so gloriously over the top and outrageous that they have to be admired and appreciated. Thurman gives a performance that's physical, gruelling and hard-nailed out of sheer necessity--if the audience doesn't buy that she's really that tough, that angry, that intent on revenge for the wrongs inflicted on her and her loved ones, then the movie would become a lampoon rather than an homage or, worse, fall apart entirely. But she holds it together with her scene-to-scene intensity and is ably supported by Fox and Liu, all of whom had to train rigorously for their roles. Liu, in particular, gets what may be the best part of her career in O-Ren, who rises to the top of the Japanese underworld despite her mixed heritage (Japanese/Chinese-American) and gender. She's ruthless, intelligent and perfectly capable of defending herself, whether it's from the verbal assault of an crime boss on her heritage or the physical assault of The Bride thirsting for revenge.

The violence in the fight scenes is so cartoonish--with limbs flying about, bodies split in two, heads lopped off--that it's hard to take seriously. (Nonetheless, Tarantino shifts the more extreme violence from color to black and white, apparently in an effort to appease the MPAA. So...violence is less graphic if the blood isn't red?)

Some viewers have come away from Kill Bill, Vol. 1 with a message of female empowerment--understandable, given how many women kick substantial ass in this movie. The Bride, Vernita, O-Ren and Go-Go (Chiaki Kuriyama), O-Ren's schoolgirl-outfit-wearing, mentally unstable lead bodyguard, all take turns taking no shit from nobody, particularly not from men. But consider what the women have to go through to get to the position of being empowered. In a sequence played out entirely in anime (a brilliant strategy by Tarantino, given the subject matter), we learn that O-Ren's parents were murdered (and, it's implied, her mother gang-raped) while she watches from under the bed, and she has to prostitute herself to the pedophile crime lord who executed them to enact her revenge. Similarly, The Bride is rented out as a living love doll by her male attendant, Buck (Bowen), while she lies in her four-year coma in the hospital. Is the message, then, that women can kick substantial ass only after suffering more than their male counterparts? And if Kill Bill is essentially a comedy, as Tarantino has maintained in interviews, why is the audience treated to two scene of children witnessing their parents being brutally murdered, or the squick-worthy details of The Bride's hospital stay?

Am I trying to read too much into Kill Bill, Vol. 1? Am I missing the point? Is there even a point to miss? Is there hidden depth here as in previous Tarantino movies, or is this really just the expertly made B-movie tribute it appears to be?

That I have so many questions and qualms is, I think, good. If I'd hated Kill Bill, Vol. 1, it wouldn't have lingered in my mind for so long, wouldn't have frustrated me so, wouldn't have made me ask so many questions. I'd have dismissed it as trash and moved on. And I wouldn't be anxious to see Vol. 2. Unfortunately, Miramax is making us wait until February for the second half, damn them. Don't they know or care that I have questions? That I crave answers? That I want to know what happens next?

And isn't that the highest compliment I can pay to Quentin Tarantino--that even though I'm not sure how I feel about the first half of the movie, I'm still eager to see the second?