Ladies and gentlemen...It's Quentin Tarantino

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2005)

You wouldn't believe the excitement I had as this movie started. You wouldn't also believe why the excitement was: I was going to watch a movie by Quentin Tarantino. I love movies and there must be someone great behind a film when it is promoted as "the 4th film by Quentin Tarantino". Already a legend with three films, Tarantino is known for his way of writing (I got to see "Pulp Fiction") and above all, his original, if not unique, directional style.
I had the chance to see all of this in "Kill Bill: Vol. 1", and more. I don't know why I hadn't bothered to look up for a Tarantino film before; it didn't call my attention. Well, "Pulp Fiction" called my attention indeed, as did "Reservoir Dogs", but not this movie. Anyway, the thing is that I saw Uma Thurman in black and white, covered in blood, saying some phrases as being massaged by a tissue with the name "Bill" in it.
Then there's color, and I realize there's a lot of visual style in the piece. Credits roll, giving us every name except the one from the writer and director (you know who that is), who will appear after the whole ride, so you get is 'his' film. Just to pump things up, we get chapters in black screen ("Chapter one: 2"), and by chapter a blonde woman has killed a black woman. Names are not so precise; when a little girl asks the blonde woman her name, she says it, but we can't hear it because it is muted by a sound effect. The fact is, the movie is not about characters entirely, so it makes no point for us to know the name. However, the blonde (that's of course, Quentin's favorite, Uma Thurman) was known as "Black Mamba"; but later, when in another chapter we see she could have died at her wedding we accept her as "The Bride". Going back, the black woman is Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), and is now dead. She's now a crossed number 2 in a list The Bride has, butThe camera shows a number 1; O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu)What happened to her? And we go to the past.
The script provides a narration by the main character, which will encounter many people and tell us their stories. Tarantino takes the job of letting us know not only The Bride, but everyone involved in what she's doing, of course, in her own words. What is that she's doing you're wondering? She's avenging the people that literally "took away her life". There's nothing else you need to know about it. This script doesn't probably contain the refined dialog Tarantino is known for, but he's not going to use that dialog in a film like this; he'll take another elements. Always making references about real life with his unreal characters, Quentin lets you know that he's having fun at the same time he's being serious. He gives freedom to his actors, and that's how they triumph. His beloved Uma is on the perfect note for her character, as is she was made to play it; and I'm just talking about her, because if I name actors, I'll name characters, and I don't want to spoil the interesting story.
In the end, you could consider the movie merely an action film; and even when it is that, it is beautiful. I'm not fan of action, but this has got everything it needs, with personality of course. Tarantino is crazy about violence, letting the blood out of heads, arms and legs. With a lot of intelligence, in a scene where there's a lot of killing, he passes the image to black and white, I think probably because he knows he'll show a lot of blood, and tries to make the journey less painful for us. Until The Bride blinksEverything is colored again. And we enjoy the fights, the environment, the locations, the performances (they used real Japanese actors for the shooting in the country of Japan), the details of a director that doesn't rush time, because he wants the viewer to see how real it can all actually be, in his fantasy; his fable. When he puts "4 months later", it's because that time doesn't fit in the final cut; but I think he'll shoot the entire four months if he could.
Don't even talk about vengeance, and The Bride's rage, when Vernita Green apologizes while she's about getting killed, and proposes something like "getting even" if she could. "Don't tell me about getting even", The Bride declares. "To get even I wouldn't have to kill you alone; I would also have to kill your daughter, wait for your husband to come back from work and kill him too".