A Gush of Blood to the Head

Rating: 9/10 (15 October 2003)

I've never done heroin, but I imagine that first hit, the one that gets you hooked, feels a bit like how I felt watching the massacre at the end of Kill Bill Vol 1.
I was skeptical. As a big QT fan I felt six years was too long to wait, and I really didn't believe the anticipation and the hype would be rewarded with a great movie. I was expecting merely a good movie, and for QT good isn't good enough. Luckily he knows this, and instead he delivered what is, if not his best film, certainly his most energetic, exciting, stylised and downright fun film.
There's been a lot of dissing of QT's motives with this movie. The hyper-stylised look of the film has been criticised as too fan-boy centric. This is a good point, but it's certainly no more so than Robert Rodriguez's Desperado, or the Coen's Blood Simple, and I don't remember anyone accusing those of being fanboy movies.
Whatever your take on the movie, you surely have to admire the man's technical ability and sheer audacity. The tea house battle that ends the movie is a masterpiece, a real example of 'the ballet of violence' that John Woo fans have always loved.
I did get the feeling from the crowd I saw it with that many were not sure what they were watching. Crouching Tiger... this most definitely was not. Pulp Fiction is was not. Hell, even Dusk til Dawn it was not. This was unlike anything QT has ever done and for that alone he should be applauded. On the release of Jackie Brown many critics had decided that he had run his course and he couldn't do anything else. Well Kill Bill is the samurai sword up the arse to those who believed that.
Anyone who loves cinema should see this movie. I won't say that everyone will love it, but it has everything that Hollywood has forgotten how to do: a good story, adrenaline pumping action, and a sense of awe. Remember how you felt when you first saw Star Wars, the Imperial Destroyer roaring over your head? Or when Indiana Jones was being chased by a giant boulder? That kind of excitement is captured here as hordes of Kato-masked villains fall at Uma's sword, or the sight of legendary Sonny Chiba bestowing on her the sword that could cut God!
Thankfully, the pop culture references that were his trademark have been toned down. Unfortunately, they've been replaced with an almost Airplane-style desire to reference other movies and TV shows. It's nice when it works (Ironside music, quotes from Eaten Alive ("I'm Buck, and here to f***"), even the girl from Battle Royale wearing the same costume as she did in that movie), but there is the potential danger for it all to become a little self-parodying, something Kill Bill most definately is not.

See it and regain your faith in cinema.