Kill Bill Thrills

Rating: 10/10 (11 October 2003)

Yuen Wo Ping should get half the directing credit for this movie because half the film is his remarkable choreographed fight scenes. This is a stylish, slick, wonderfully artistically violent film. Uma Thurman is not only amazing but believable. Tarantino is very much aware of the importance of music and just like in his previous films I think he did in outstanding job in choosing each musical number for each scene.
Basic synopsis: Uma Thurman wants revenge on a former employer and her former coworkers who shot her up during at her wedding. She spends the rest of that movie planning and exacting that revenge.
As I said before, there are some amazing fight scenes in this film, in particular with a young 17 year old, but deadly Japanese school girl with a ball and chain. This is Tarantino's homage to the violent Asian action films of the 70s. Pretty much everyone knows that Quentin is a big movie buff and freak and his whole career in film making has been paying homage to the films he loved while growing up. This guy sees the beauty of the uberviolent, smashed nose, low budget films such as Cleopatra Jones, Game of Death, Fist of Fury, The Killing Machine (Japanese its - Shinkansen daibakuha). In fact if you ever get to see The Killing Machine you will understand much about the violence in Kill Bill. Anyway, the fight scenes in this film are nothing short from brilliant. My biggest detraction of this movie is that the way it ends. It felt, very much so, that it ended in the middle. I know Volume 2 will be released in February and I understand some aspect of splitting this film in half, but that is the problem. Most films that have sequels attached to them are films that have a definite ending themselves. But they were made with and ending. Volume 1 of Kill Bill was original made to be a single picture and thus the ending for the movie is actually in Volume 2. What we have here is a film that ends on its crest. We only get half the plot, we only get half the character development (what little Tarantino usually have in his films). What we get is half a movie. I am sure that Tarantino has a final cut clause in his contract and thus ended up with a 4, probably 4 ½ hour film. And I am sure he as willing to release it as such, but Miramax came up with the (not so) brilliant idea of releasing the film in 2 parts. I guess in a hope of doubling its profits. I know theater chains hate 3 + hours films. They would rather have 8 showings of a 2 hour film instead of 5 showings of films such as Braveheart or Gladiator. They make more money during the day by faster turnover rates. So they WILL NOT support a 4 hour film. 3 ½ hours is as a far as they are willing to go, heck they barely support 3 hour films. Now when a director wants to tell a story and it takes 4 hours to tell the only way we get the whole story is through director's cut DVDs (for example The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, 1st two parts added an additional 30 minutes each, it was the same way with Cameron's Aliens). There is only one POSTIVE light in this whole 2 part nonsense and that is that part 2 is being released in February and not a year later (as in Lord of the Rings). Will they release the film on one single DVD? I doubt it, where is the profit in that? Anyway, I give KILL BILL an A. I liked it and Quentin Tarantino along with fight choreographers Yuen Wo Ping and Sonny Chiba not only delivers a highly entertaining film but a highly memorable one to boot.