A seemingly miraculous feat of technical and conceptual innovation.

Rating: 10/10 (19 February 2011)

If there was one thing we knew about QT prior to Kill Bill it was that he was a perfectionist. If there was another, it was that he was a master of dialogue and character-driven film-making where his visual flourishes were expertly but subtly woven into the background of his films. Thus, when he decided to make his next feature a full-blown action film QT was not only entering new territory but was determined to show us that his mastery of the visual side to film-making was just as sharp as his mastery of the verbal side.
One might have argued that he was already accomplished in this respect. After all, there were moments of technical mastery such as the tracking shots in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He gave us an extraordinary example of how split-screen technology can be used to move a story forward in Jackie Brown. His use of the camera in frenetic scenes such as the 'Mr. Pink getaway' scene was as raw and effective as the best action directors and his limited interference with the camera in the majority of his dialogue-driven scenes were indicative of a very disciplined mind reminiscent of the greats such as Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Allen, and of course Kubrick. However, QT believed (and with some justification) that action films are, from a technical point of view, the most difficult films to make well. And if he was to prove his worth as a director he would have to make it is an action director.
To say that QT was successful in his desire to cut it as an action director is an understatement of "gargantuan" proportions as Kill Bill is an action film that goes beyond any that came before it or have emerged since. Not content to toil in one of the many action sub-genres, QT bridges at least 4 genres from Spaghetti Western to Japanese Anime, seamlessly interweaving the different styles and pushing the boundaries of their conventions to the point that the viewer finds his/herself witnessing a broader yet unique and singular genre of QT's own creation. With each passing scene, QT squeezes, twists, and stretches traditional conventions to find new ways to lure the viewer into his frenetic world of pure vengeance.
And this is precisely what makes KB such an extraordinary film-going experience. It is the profoundly imaginative manner in which he conceives of and executes the action scenes that is the most jaw-dropping aspect to this film. This film is built on a seemingly endless series of conceptual flourishes that usurp and assimilate traditional samurai, Kung-Fu, anime, and western genre conventions onto his unique and broader platform. Take for example the moment when the bride plucks the eye out of one her assailants, signaling the film's switch from colour to black and white. The act which becomes more significant to the story in Vol. 2, is a conceptual bridge to the traditional samurai sword-play film convention of filming bloody scenes in black and white so as to avoid censorship. It is with this convention that QT heralds the imminence of blood-shed, and if the eye-plucking is anything to go by, a lot of it.
Of course, one mustn't limit one's review of KB to its technical innovation. It is after all a QT film and like all his films its fueled by his typical razor-sharp dialogue and dazzlingly original characters. This is of course yet another factor that raises it above your typical actioneer in that the time is taken to give each of the main characters a back-story and mutually contradicting layers. Naturally, QT's peerless casting plays a part here as he chooses actor after actors who inhabit these layered characters in ways that retrospectively speaking it would seem only they could.
The gang of assassins on whom the Bride is wreaking her revenge are played by an unlikely ensemble of actors who each exude a unique brand of cool which is expertly tailored for a film of this nature. Populating the background of this story are an array of characters which together with the actors who play them (e.g., Gordon Lui, Michael Parks , Sonny Chiba, David Carradine) represent a knowing and sometimes audacious nod to the genres that KB is exploring.
Central to the film's casting of course is Uma Thurman as both volumes of the film rest on her shoulders. Most important here I believe is that Thurman never once stops being a woman. I have found that one of the most consistently irritating features of heroine-centred films is the tendency for the woman to act like a typical male, specifically, macho hero. Nowhere in the course of this film is there a trace of this in her performance. Instead, we are given a rather interesting portrayal of a woman clinging to her revenge mission as though there was nothing else to live for. Throughout the film, she demonstrates an authentic anger, composure, emotion, and cunning that is distinctly feminine.
However, the real star of this film is QT. Ultimately, KB is a reflection of an intuition for film-making that goes beyond special. As the film progressed, I found myself repeatedly re-evaluating a director who I had already considered one of the greats and each time elevating his position in that hierarchy. I almost regretted that KB was 'nothing more' than an action film as films of that genre are often looked down on in acts of ignorant film-snobbery. However, like QT argues, great action films are not easy to make. They involve the choreography of words, sound, and physical movement into a unified whole. KB is a testament to this ideal and as a result it is a memorising piece of film-making that in terms of technical and conceptual innovation is matched only by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Citizen Kane. Seriously!