Kill Bill Vol. 1 review

Rating: Null/10 (4 May 2015)

The story of Kill Bill revolves around the female character, Kiddo, played by Uma Thurman. The film starts off with the main character, Kiddo, waking up in a hospital. The viewer can deduce that she has been in a coma for a long period of time. The theme of the story is the vengeance ans cruelty of mankind. That is the focal point of Kiddo's existence at this point and she sets out to avenge herself and her unborn baby. She creates a list of people she knows were involved in her unborn baby's death. Her main goal is to find and kill a man named Bill played by David Carradine. Her first agenda is kill Bill's henchmen, the assassins that tried to murder her at her own wedding. In this film Kiddo confronts two of the assassins, Vernita Green and O-Ren Ishii played by Vivica A. Fox and Lucy Lui respectively.
It is a unique film in that the story is broken up into 2 parts and both Kill Bill I and Kill Bill II were created together. Tarantino created this film as a tribute to the classic seventies kung-fu style films. The imagery and art direction are beautiful and have that cheesy style seventies look. This film is over the top and exaggerated but it was what Tarantino was going for. Every character in the film is extremely violent, aggressive, and cruel, with a dark and violent past. This was Tarantino's commentary on the state of the world today. He is not so much promoting violence, but showing the viewer that violence and aggressive behavior is in all of human kind, one only needs to be part of the under belly of society for the aggressiveness to be let out. For example, a scene about the character Gogo Yubari played by Chiaki Kuriyama shows a sweet innocent girl who witnesses the brutal murder of her parents. From this point, she evolves from her innocent stage into a cold-blood assassin who seems to have no conscientiousness at all.
The homage to the classic martial arts films of the seventies can be seen throughout the film. One amazing scene, in which a sword fight is played out in silhouette, shows Tarantino's artistic style, and one feels almost as if he is watching Bruce Lee in action. Another amazing scene is the sword fight between Kiddo and O-Ren Ishii. The setting is beautiful, with a snow-covered landscape. This battle is a direct recreation of the classic martial arts films. Kill Bill also has some memorable stand-off scenes, similar to the classic stand-off scene in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and the remarkable stand-off scene in another of Tarantino's films, Reservoir Dogs.
Although the film is an ultra violent gore fest, using gallons of blood, it is more of Tarantino's warning to humanity. If we allow the sadistic vengeful side of ourselves to be released, our life will be consumed with hate and a never ending need for revenge against those we feel have wronged us. It is a reminder to all of us, that w have the ability to become like any one of his characters, if we are not careful with our thoughts and behaviors.