Tarantino's bloody Valentine

Rating: Null/10 (31 October 2003)

Tarantino's bloody Valentine

Clap your hands, stomp your feet and wiggle your toes

* * * * * (5 out of 5)
Kill Bill: Volume 1
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino, 2003
Kill Bill hits the ground running. With an uncanny grasp of film lore and a boy-scout's shameless innocence, Quentin Tarantino carves up a bloodied slice of geek mania in the finest of martial arts traditions - as masturbatory as it is exploitive and rewarding.
There's a popular saying about Tarantino. That he didn't go to film school, he went to 'films'. Kill Bill underlines this with a big, fat marker in screaming pink.
It is crafted with both a burning passion and a delicate sense of detail, amidst a grounded understanding of the history and style of its many scattershot origins. Be it Hollywood, spaghetti westerns, Che Chang, the Shaw brothers, a cult benchmark like Blade Runner (yes, that's the L.A. tunnel doubling for Tokyo) or pop-culture 60s TV-schlock like the Green Hornet (music and Kato mask) and Star Trek (how about that pompous opening quote?). Tarantino is throwing everything and the kitchen sink in the same cooker and it smells delicious. Tastes even better.
Is it a tribute or a parody then? Neither. It's a celebration.
The plot is deceptively simple: a woman known as The Bride (Uma Thurman) seeks revenge on a team of assassins (The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, or DiVAS) led by a man named Bill, who massacred her wedding party (including The Bride's unborn child) and left a bullet in her brain. As if that wasn't enough, Miramax decided to cut the movie (180 minutes) into two separate parts. Whatever stand Tarantino made on this issue doesn't matter, because Volume 1 works effortlessly in its current running time, even though we don't get to see that much of head-honcho Bill (portrayed by sleaze icon David Carradine - remember how bad this man was at kung-fu?) or the whistling, hip-swinging, one-eyed Darryl Hannah. Instead we get an agile Thurman carving her way through opponent after opponent, leaving wounds and body parts that erupt like scarlet geysers.
As with his other films, Tarantino ignores chronological order and goes about his story in a mish-mash of information. Yes, this is the style we are accustomed to with him but it never felt as right as it does here. This is the cartoon (and anime) style of interwoven storytelling, where characters are rooted by their past experiences and charged by emotions of revenge, while defined by their weapons of choice and/or colorful names.

It turns out no one does it better and Tarantino naturally also knows where the line is drawn - he's a Ph.D. in congenial geekdom laws - so there's no plastered speech bubbles of "oomph" and "kaboom" and no awkward special effects just for show. He might tease us with bleeping out a name, go Manga anime for an otherwise too offending scene or suddenly turn black and white as a fingerpointer to TV censorship, but it's all direct homagés that fit as a whole. There's an unflagging spirit to Kill Bill, as if the tons of soul, trivia and history invested in it was meant to be.
There are also no digital effects during the fight scenes.

Tarantino brought in friend and choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, best known to the MTV-generation for his Matrix and Crouching Tiger work. Yet the elaborate action in Kill Bill is like nothing you've ever seen before. It's a gorgeous throwback to Woo-Ping's original style from the 70s - his Zui Quan (Drunken Master) days - which translates to being real stunts by real people and an emphasis on, say, just how sharp a Japanese sword can be. CGI-less and based on hardcore flow rather than specific stiff kung-fu moves (see Matrix), even the rare wire-work feels fresh and elegant. Blended with a keen eye for editing (Sally Menke works miracles), Kill Bill takes genre material and elevates it to a whole other level. To a whole new world. The showdown in the House of Blue Leaves restaurant between The Bride and the yakuza underworld is the most exhilarating, well-staged and intoxicating swordfight ever brought to the big screen. Doubt me? Just watch Tarantino's smoke.
Thurman delivers a remarkable performance as The Bride. Never once do you doubt her moxie or capabilities. Physically, she's completely convincing and not just a "silly Caucasian girl playing with Samurai swords" (an actual quote from the movie ofcourse), evident from the opening, high-speed knife-fight with Vivica Fox (as killer vixen Vernita Green) to her eye-popping electric boogie twirls on a dancefloor cutting hundreds of yakuzas into bits and pieces. Literally. Thurman's martial arts mannerisms are dead-on - a performance for the history books. White girl, yellow heart. Indeed. She truly honors the tracksuit she wears.

While the yakuza showdown packs the most wallop, the best scene turns out to be a rather exquisite one. The final stand-off in Volume 1 between The Bride and another faster-pussycat assasin, O-Ren (Lucy Lui)- in an idyllic snow-covered garden - is a marvel. So where'd the snow come from? Don't ask and don't spoil the moment. Just acknowledge and respect that Tarantino is honoring an ancient Japanese tradition with the kind of love a mother has for her new-born. It's an angelic scene, enhanced by the loud dead calm that only lazy, falling snow produces. As the two warrior goddesses reflect in the crisp white landscape, the silence is broken momentarily by the caressing clank from a wooden waterpump. It's pure poetry.
The cast is perfect all around. Tarantino brings out both slapstick and relaxed realism in Sonny Chiba, while he gets the rather obvious Oriental fetiches (and his own?) covered with dressing Chiaki Kuriyama up as a schoolgirl with murderous inclinations. Her weapon of choice is a steel ball and chain with pop-out razors. What a deliciously funny performance by Kuriyama (however much is taken from Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale laid aside). But it's Lui that almost upstages our heroine. Her dotted, cheeky smile and twinkle of eye concealing a hidden ruthlessness is the object of much attention by the camera.
Lui is forgiven every bad episode of Ally (that's about 95%) and the shameless Charlie's Angels remakes for her performance as the sexy Godmother of the yakuza. I am reminded of John Ford's famous statement - when an assistent director questioned a shot he was making of a character's face, stating it was boring - that "What is more exciting than the human face?". Lui articulates a delicate cuteness and bruteness through the most subtle of facial expressions and as she fronts the yakuza entourage arriving at the restaurant, enhanced by the terrific main theme, it's as classic and cool as cinema can possibly get.
The mastermind behind the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA, has scored Kill Bill (together with Tarantino) and given it a pounding pulse to match the storm of visuals that come in from all sides of the universe. The overall sound is hard to define. Imagine old-school Nancy Sinatra ("Bang Bang") mixed with the savvy groove of Hotei's "Battle without Honor or Humanity" on top of the theme from "Ironside" by Quincy Jones, and you'll have some idea. Oh wait, those songs are already in the movie. Well, there you go.
It has to be said: Kill Bill is extremely gory. The violence is ludicrous, sometimes hilarious, but it actually walks a fine line between simply bringing bloodsplattering anime to life and the repulsive horror of Michael Madsen's ear-cutting moment in Reservoir Dogs. One minute Kill Bill gets down, dirty and dangerous for fun or shock, and in the next Tarantino brings everything to a screeching halt - as when The Bride and Vernita simultaniously hide their knifes away, welcoming reality walking in the door in the shape of Vernita's kid coming home from school. You just might be able to sense Tarantino laughing contently in the background. He's toying with us, but it's as thrilling for us as it is for him.

Kill Bill is glorius pulp fiction. A trancelike celebration of the pulp in the fiction. A martial arts benchmark and a slobbering, bloody Valentine's kiss from Tarantino to movie geeks all around the world. Right smack on the mouth.
Now, that's a first.