Tarantino delivers another devilishly good film experience and proves he can bring his own style to a revenge film that purposely cuts back on substance.

Rating: 9/10 (12 October 2008)

Yes, Kill Bill Volume 1 is a definite exercise in style over substance, but this isn't just anybody's style, this is Tarantino's style and what a style to possess. If his preceding film, Jackie Brown in 1997-98, was all characters and attention to detail spanning over two hours then Kill Bill is him letting his hair down and giving us an out and out visual-fest of colour, effects and violence delivered in double quick time; well, double quick compared to Jackie Brown and its brilliant study. But Tarantino had proved his worth when it came to out and out substance in films. His attention to a love story and character development in Jackie Brown came after Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, two of my favourite films told with such confidence and in such an entertaining way, the latter of which has since embedded itself into modern folklore, is stone wall proof that he can do it when he wants.
It's not that Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is an example of Tarantino not wanting to do what he can do, but more so a relaxation of complicated and developed films with narratives about realistic people. Yes, you can deem Pulp Fiction complicated even though it has inspired countless other films because there are some people even now that, on a first viewing when not familiar with the genre and influences, cannot fathom how one character can be alive at the end even though he shouldn't be.
On first view the film does come across as a flat out adventure, a one lined journey about one person in a routine revenge narrative driven film. But it's this familiar template that Tarantino's uses to place his own unique touches that he is so able to bring to a piece of text. If Pulp Fiction was so memorable, it was so for bringing life into an old genre full of stereotypes as noted by many. Here, Tarantino brings his own breath of fresh air or style to the well worn start revenge flick. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 begins with the sort of introduction you might not expect from Tarantino, certainly not from the very opening. There is no long tracking shot of a static woman on a moving walkway or guys calmly sitting around a table discussing Madonna. Instead we get black and white, panting and a bloodied woman whose image is juxtaposed by the calm and methodical speech from a man named Bill (Caradine). A few lines of dialogue pass and the woman is shot in the head.
What develops is a revenge film as told from this woman's point of view, The Bride (Thurman), a nameless (for now) antihero on a mission that will see her have to undergo a process as she plots her way to the ultimate goal of revenge. What's great about the revenge process from this position and similarly so in one of my favourite films entitled Payback, is that the antihero lead has just about nothing to loose and thus, they go about their mission in just about the most ruthless and unforgiving way possible. Their enemies think they're dead; they accept they've been to Hell and back and nothing else could be as bad as their prior tragedy and they go hell for leather in trying to attain the status of 'even'.
The Bride visits Vernita Green (Fox) after treading through some child's toys on a lawn, mise-en-scene that leads the audience to realise it is a house that inhabits a child. Vernita opens the door and there is a flashback (a Tarantino trademark) before a fight erupts immediately placing the audience in another juxtaposed situation: this woman whose been shot in the head and has been through Hell versus one of her enemies who it now seems has a young child. There is a brief fight before Vernita's child's bus stops outside and, echoing the tactic in Reservoir Dogs during the ear scene, there is a break in proceedings further plunging the audience into a realm of either frustration or unfamiliarity. How many other films would have finished the fight and ignored the 'pit-stop' routine? Tarantino re-announces his style from here and continues throughout in a barrage of memorable scenes.
But Kill Bill is really a furtherance in feminism. The entire assassination gang, bar Budd (Madsen), are female and the sexually active male nurse in The Bride's hospital wing gets his just deserts from said strong, independent female lead who takes no prisoners. A similar scene happens during a flashback scene involving the female Japanese character of Gogo (Kuriyama) who asks the question 'who is penetrating who now?' as she kills another potentially sexually active male in a similarly nasty manner.
The film builds to a climax that certainly delivers but not after delivering flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks when introducing Lucy Lui's O-Ren Ishii. The character of Bill is kept out of shot alá Marcellus Wallace and talks Elle Driver (Hannah) out of killing The Bride while she's still in a coma because it's not the 'honourable' thing to do; while clutching a Samurai sword which of course epitomises the ideal of honour amongst ancient Japanese warriors. Volume 1's final fight scene is all guts and gore but the images are juxtaposed with pinball noises and ten pin's clattering as the light and colouring changes brilliantly and dramatically, although my favourite touch is Sophie's (Dreyfus) ringtone which is 'Auld Lang Syne', a song that includes the lyric 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?'. The Bride's reply would probably be a resounding 'No'.