Kill Bill Vol. 1 (DVD)

“Revenge is a dish best served cold” – Old Klingon Proverb ~ Details ~ Director: Quentin Tarantino Length: 111 minutes Certificate: UK 18 Company: Mirimax Films Main Actors: Uma Therman (The Bride); Lucy Lui (O-Ren Ishii); Vivicia A. Fox (Vernita Green); Daryl Hannah (Elle Driver); David Carridine (Bill). ~ Plot ~ 4 years ago in a Texas chapel a wedding party is brutally slain by 4 members of the Deathly Viper Assassin Squad led by a man named Bill. The Bride is lying in a blood stained wedding dress having been beaten before a gun is pointed at her head when she tells Bill the baby is his just ...  Read the complete review

In a remote Texan chapel, an atrocity has been committed. A wedding party has been brutally slain, their bodies battered, bloodied and riddled with bullet holes. Still in her white wedding dress, the bride’s body is perhaps the most tragic. Dead from a gunshot to the head, the wretched woman lies on the floor like a human tomb for the unborn child that she was carrying. But whilst the infant has indeed been murdered, The Bride has not. Four years later she wakes from her coma and miraculously comes to life. The Bride is a member of an infamous team of assassins named the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by a man known simply as Bill. For reasons we are ...  Read the complete review

In recent years ‘fusion’ cuisine has become very trendy, this is when flavours, spices, ingredients and cooking methods from different countries and continents are blended together to produce new and hopefully tasty dishes. Kill Bill Vol. 1 is the first instalment of an attempt by king of cool director Quentin Tarantino to create ‘Fusion’ Cinema and he has been very liberal with his ingredients. So is this a recipe for disaster or a gourmand’s dream? One major criticism of this film, which I have heard again and again, is that it is self indulgent and pretentious. I came to watching this as a huge Tarantino fan but with many reservations and yet I was ...  Read the complete review

I resisted seeing this film for ages. Back in the day, I loved Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction (I didn't see Jackie Brown). But, on trying to watch Pulp Fiction again a couple of years ago, I found that I'd lost all patience with it. What had once seemed clever and daring now just seemed trite and dull and frankly rather irritating. Besides, as I see more and more of the films that Tarantino gleefully pastiches, I'm of the opinion that they're far more entertaining than his knowing homages. So I avoided this until now. And on the whole I think I was right. While Kill Bill Vol. 1 has some cracking fight scenes, I found everything else in it to be annoying ...  Read the complete review

Let me be honest, I am somewhat ambivalent about the work of Quentin Tarantino. I try and approach each of his films with an entirely open mind. Reservoir Dogs was a quality film. Pulp Fiction was exciting the first time around and tedious the second. Jackie Brown was just plain awful (the structure of the ending plagiarised Kubrick?s The Killing and I love The Killing!!!!!!!!! [hence the exaggerated number of ?!?]). And so it was that I sat in the squalor of my local cinema (for squalid it is) and prepared myself to enjoy Kill Bill. Did I? Yes, I think so; but wait, it was not so simple. Like so many of Tarantino?s films there is an element ...  Read the complete review