Worth waiting for

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2004)

SPOILERS!! Kill Bill is the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino. In case you were unaware of this vital fact, the opening credits include the legend, `The fourth film by Quentin Tarantino'. This is a trend that needs to be nipped in the bud right now. The heart sinks at the thought of reading, `The thirty-ninth film by Steven Spielberg' or `The twentieth film by Ron Howard' or (especially) `The second film by Stephen Fry'. Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino's fourth full-length feature film) is only half a film. Its full title is Kill Bill vol. 1. At least it's not Kill Bill: Episode One: Attack of the Kung Fu Fighting Babes: The Special Edition. Tarantino, after hectoring from his producers, `decided' to split his epic action movie into two parts, thus enabling his beloved fans to appreciate fully the fruits of his artistic genius without having to nip to the toilet halfway through. They probably did us all a favour: One three-hour movie consisting of nothing but fighting and sassy dialogue? Hard work. Two ninety-minute movies consisting of nothing but fighting and sassy dialogue? A walk in the park. Two walks in the park. Tarantino, after the `mature' (i.e. `dull') Jackie Brown (The third film by Quentin Tarantino) has decided to play to his strengths here. So we get lots of violence and great music and wide-screen close-ups and brilliant action, but not so many celebrity cameos or people sitting around talking and smoking dope. Despite all the critical praise that was heaped on him for Jackie Brown, it's clear that that film saw him working on auto-pilot, cruising along happily enough with all his showbiz chums. It's not a film that anyone needs to see more than once. Unlike Reservoir Dogs (The first film by Quentin Tarantino) which demands repeat viewings, and works its magic on you like a drug. That film remains his finest moment, no matter what the Academy or anyone else said about Pulp Fiction (The second film by Quentin Tarantino). True, it was Pulp Fiction that cemented the man's reputation as a purveyor of brilliantly-made, hysterical B-movies, but Reservoir Dogs is more than just a lurid heist thriller. It would have been interesting to see Tarantino develop in the noir directions it hinted at rather than giving in to his basic instincts, stepping on the gas, shaking the ketchup bottle, and piling up the pop-culture references until we're all blue in the face. And, while Jackie Brown was praised for its `maturity', at least one viewer found it interminably and unforgivably lacklustre.
So we can be forgiven for approaching Kill Bill vol. 1 with some trepidation. Early signs are not good: in-joke references to old movies (`Our feature presentation', `Shaw Scope') fail to raise a smile. As the man himself might say, `har-di-f**kin-har'. And then. Uma Thurman draws a square in the air with her finger and the square doesn't appear on screen, thus immediately banishing all memories of that hideous moment in Pulp Fiction, when it does. Indeed, for all its wild and crazy action this is a surprisingly traditional and old-fashioned film. There are no computer-generated effects. There are none of the ludicrous and clichéd fights that we have become so used to over recent years. What we get instead is blood, sweat and tears. People fight and get injured and exhausted and some of them (quite a lot of them, actually) even die. Blood spurts all over the place. But there also startlingly beautiful moments of silence amid the carnage, such as the snow-bound night-time shot of Uma and Lucy facing off in the garden, as a water clock tips over and clicks back into place. Like a peasant in a Bruegel painting, it takes centre stage while momentous events happen in the background. But never mind all that - what about the plot? What actually happens in this movie? Well.Uma has been treated badly (beaten up, shot in the head, that sort of thing) but somehow is still alive. Waking from her coma she swears revenge. She gets a guy to make her a sword, and then she goes to kill people. Not necessarily in that order. Along the way there are: a truly great cartoon flashback, colour-coded subtitles (why don't more films do this?), Daryl Hannah whistling and wearing an eye-patch, and Lucy Liu getting scalped. Again, not necessarily in that order. And that's about it. Yes, I think we can honestly say that Quentin has made going to the cinema fun again. It's just a shame he had to split his film into two, thus turning it into a `saga', and thus grouping it with all those other horrible, portentous, humourless, endless sagas currently polluting the culture. Let the geeks have their Rings and Potter and Matrix Retarded. The rest of us can wallow in the guilty pleasure of a wide-screen extravaganza that shows Mr. Tarantino at the very top of his game. Of course only a lunatic would want all movies to be like this one; a bit of depth and subtlety is always welcome now and then. But, in a time when so much Hollywood mainstream product is artistically and imaginatively redundant, it comes as a very pleasant surprise to find we need Quentin Tarantino more than ever.