A Somewhat overrated, but Easily Underrated, Film

Rating: 8/10 (2 January 2008)

I am not a Quentin Tarantino junkie, in all truth I find his fan club quite annoying, but I must say this movie (and note this review applies to both volumes) is a good one. The story chronicles a murderous Uma Thurmond (name of character withheld) as she seeks to eliminate the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad (or DiVAS) headed by the titular character Bill. Cue a roller-coaster of blood, betrayal, Bullets and Samurai swords.
Quentin Tarantino is (despite any opinions I (or you) may have on the man) is a good director and a good script writer. The problem in judging one of his films stems from the nature of the writing. The plot for this film is (ignoring what was done with it) cliché beyond mercy, and while comically unrealistic elements can be welcome every here and again, the basic cliché of the film cannot be ignored. Where this becomes a problem in passing judgment is in that all clichés are fully intentional and done to extreme levels. Thus the conundrum that would later be presented by the film Grindhouse presents itself here: If an overtly bad plot element is intentionally overt, is the element still bad? The answer is yes, but a gray pool is likewise created where the movie itself can still be good; this gray pool is what allows Kill Bill to succeed as a film.
How campy is it? Ridiculously. Whether it be Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu quoting the Trix Cereal marketing line, or a fictional kung-fu move that causes the victims heart to explode this movie contains many elements that are really stupid. The fact that the movie (again I speak for both) can suspend your reality to the point where such camp is accepted common place in the world created, marks that this film is an original accomplishment. To clarify: this movie takes what is lame and makes it clever, and that is precisely why the movie is good.
Another problem with Kill Bill, that allows it to keep it's brilliance, is that the film doesn't know what genre it wants to be. It is the Frankenstein of kung-fu, western, generic action, anime, dramatic comedy blood fest. The basic story is the cliché revenge story that one can see in far too many kung-fu stories. The music (while holding a more Asian flair during the more blatantly kung-fu moment) is carried by a spaghetti western through a lot, and many showdowns will carry more than a subtle similarity to films like Fist Full of Dollars or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (you'll excuse me if I ignore their proper Italian names). At other moments the camera angles and shots seems strait out of an Anime, you have shoot outs that you've seen a million times over with a little bit of overtly comedic dialog in between. Over all these stylistic flairs is an ultra-violent drama of a homicidal woman out to create suffering in her former droogs. Around the sixth chapter (The film being separated in ten chapters (a factor that only finds need to be mentioned now) we are introduced to a bizarre love story between the protagonist killer and her primary target. The movie jumps from genre to genre so much that it becomes accepted; should the shifts from stylistic themes be any less frequent, the film would collapse on itself.
One little element of the movie further adds to its success; Tarantino's trademark of showing events out of sequence pokes its head out in this film. After a prolog with a beat up bride getting shot in the head we just to the first chapter of the film, where in, Uma Thurmond assaults the second name on her hit list; chapter six takes us to a time before the prolog, and later still (in a chapter who's specific number escapes me at this time) takes us back to Uma Thurmond's martial arts training. By the end of the story you will know the all the rationale behind all the characters actions; as for plot wholes (a problem any film like this has to work harder than most to prevent) I couldn't find any.
While this film succeeds on pretty much every level it strives for, it is not a perfect ten. The story does its best to keep the action moving and the story interesting, but the second part does move a little slow near the end. Likewise while the story is a quirky bizarre thrill ride that one won't soon forget, it grabs from so many other films that it cannot be rated as its own original work, so much as the ultimate showcase of under-appreciated film techniques that one doesn't see too often in modern cinema. While not film perfection (or even an all that original story) Kill Bill is a solid film that will entertain most who see it, and will show a new twist on archetypes that have been done to death.