Where's the thrill, Bill? (Kill Bill Vol. 1 (DVD))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Kill Bill Vol. 1 (DVD)
Date:	16/11/03 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Uma Thurman, Sonny Chiba

Disadvantages: Too long, Tarantino likes his own work too much, Fails to maintain interest

Right from the off, "Kill Bill Volume 1" pulls no punches, and the black and white introduction sees a pregnant "The Bride" (Uma Thurman) get shot in the head as part of a bloody massacre on her wedding day.

Four years later, and The Bride awakens from her coma and as her memories of her wedding day return and the realisation that she has lost her child, she starts off on a quest for revenge against her old mentor and lover, Bill, and his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, a group in which she used to belong.

That's the plot, pure and simple.

"Kill Bill Vol. 1" is Quentin Tarantino's first film in six years since "Jackie Brown" and has been eagerly awaited for some time. As I consider myself to be quite a large Tarantino fan, I settled down to watch this with high hopes, but unfortunately the film did not satisfy me at all.

Taking a leaf from his earlier "Pulp Fiction", the story "Kill Bill" is told in chapter form and the chapters are not in chronological order. The black and white introduction is set four years before the main events in the movies, but the plot might veer off suddenly to another point in the story, or to flesh out one of the major characters.

However, this is Uma Thurman's film, and she appears in most of the sequences in some shape or form, even if it's only lying in bed in a coma. I've long been a fan of Uma Thurman, and in Kill Bill she doesn't let herself down. Aided by Tarantino's trademark snappy dialogue, she plays the part of The Bride with a snappiness I've not previously seen in her work.

The rest of the cast do their jobs, but it's hard to give any additional praise or criticism as most of them don't appear for very long. Lucy Liu and Julie Dreyfus both offer good performances as the film's main bad "guy" and assistant respectively. David Carradine's Bill appears only
really as a disembodied voice, and you only see his hand during the introduction at the start.

The fact that there's so little to the plot means that there's a lot of space to fill between the start and end of the story, and I found that "Kill Bill" contained a lot of superfluous padding. The whole animated back story of O-Ren Ishii is one example of a sequence which could easily have been omitted from the film, without detracting from the story/plot, and Kill Bill's big fight sequence in the House of the Blue Leaves mirrors Matrix Reloaded's Burly Brawl in that it's overlong and while it is exciting and interesting at first, this soon fades away as yet more limbs are hacked off and henchmen are dispatched. Tarantino's use of various visual styles during this fight fails to stimulate or rekindle any interest that I had initially shown, which was quite high. The fight is very well executed and the wire work involved is amazing and creates some nice moves for The Bride to punish her opposition, but eventually the thrill wears off as the sequence drags on.

One sequence that really did grab my attention was when The Bride meets Sonny Chiba's sword maker, Hattori Hanzo. The original quick fire banter between him and his assistant was very funny and entertaining and hid a dark past that is eventually revealed. The true nature of the relationship between Hanzo and (I assume) his friend is one of respect.

It should also be mentioned that there's a lot of blood in this film, however it's always portrayed in a comic book style. When limbs are cut off, blood spurts for many metres with almost pressure hose insistence. This has the effect of almost turning the combat scenes into comedy pieces, but not quite.

I feel that there are three main flaws in Kill Bill. The first would be that I think that Tarantino is more concerned about the style of this film than he is of the story telling. Secondly, I
can't help but shake the feeling that Kill Bill has been written by a child. The ridiculous amount of fighting versus plot, the stupid codenames for the killers and the ludicrous name of the team of assassins which seems to have been created simply for the acronym (DVAS) all points to something coming from a kid in Year 7. The last flaw is that Tarantino is too big a fan of his own work and Kill Bill, like Jackie Brown before it, would become a far better film if the running time was reduced. This raises the question about whether Kill Bill should be one film, and whether Volume 2 will also suffer from the same padding and lack of editing.

Admittedly, "Kill Bill Volume 1" is only half of the story, and a viewing of the second half may well mean that my opinion of Volume 1 becomes better as more information becomes available. However, unlike the other film which has done this trick this year, Matrix 2 and 3, I have no desire to even go and see Kill Bill Volume 2 in February.

While the cast do their jobs well, when needed, and there are one or two moments when Kill Bill did entertain me (notably the Sonny Chiba sequence and the start of the Blue Leaves swordfight), overall I found it hard to be positive about this film and one or two shining moments aren't enough to rescue this film.

Cast:
Uma Thurman - The Bride (Black Mamba)
David Carradine - Bill
Vivica A. Fox - Vernita Green (Copperhead)
Daryl Hannah - Elle Driver (California Mountain Snake)
Lucy Liu - O-Ren Ishii (Cottonmouth)
Michael Madsen ? Budd (Sidewinder)
Sonny Chiba - Hattori Hanzo
Julie Dreyfus - Sofie Fatale

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Runtime: 111 min

Summary: