A review-proof movie?

Rating: Null/10 (10 October 2003)

If you've been alive and conscious in this country for the last few months, you will have seen ads and/or the trailer for "Kill Bill" and/or articles in magazines/newspapers/the Internet and/or interviews with/appearances by Mr. Tarantino, Ms Thurman et al. (Mr. Tarantino was on Jimmy Kimmel's show just last night, impishly suggesting 12-year-olds should pay to see "Good Boy" then sneak into his movie.) So everybody who would see it anyway knows what it's about and what Mr. T's trying to achieve. Just as J.D. Salinger recommended decades ago that a writer should write what in his heart he most wants to read, Mr. T makes the movies he most wants to see. I think he thinks his fans will also like it or will come around eventually, and to hell with the critics altogether. So, did I like it? Well, this is the first movie I've seen in years that I was actually sorry to see end. Would I recommend it? Well, remember the ads: what you saw there is what you get in the movie, and then some, and then some more ....
If this movie becomes a huge hit, I hope Ms Thurman will get the credit she deserves. I was never a huge fans of hers before: another wan pallid languid blow-away-in-a-breeze blonde ingenue type, she struck me as being. I figured the brilliant performance Tarantino extracted from her in "Pulp Fiction" was the exception proving the rule. Well, pass me the seasoned salt so I can eat my crow, because Thurman blew me away in this. She now has the life-experience in her face that wasn't there before, physically she's at her peak from all that martial-arts training, she invests every line reading and every facial expression with just the right degree of oomph. Tarantino called her a "goddess" recently. In Europe she would be, benefiting from the reverence and great parts written for mature women over there. Here? Older actresses practically need their own production companies to get something other than the "Honey, is everything okay?" parts. (Mid-thirties is "older" for Yank actresses, sorry to say.)
Don't want to slight the rest of the cast, we just don't see much of them except for the priceless Lucy Liu, who lets her iconic character exude a kind of sad resonance. Viveca Fox is just a shade too "Yo, wussup" at times but then that's how Quentin wrote it, reminding us how he's "down with the brothas." (Amazingly, there wasn't a single "Nigger" in his script--er, excuse me, "N-word.") Fun to see the legendary Sonny Chiba in a semi-comedic wise-elder role, & the Japanese thugs (male and female) are all appropriately over the top. Barely recognized Darryl Hannah behind her eye-patch, which of course had a red cross on it when she was impersonating a nurse.
Tarantino still eschews a straight linear narrative style, opening this story immediately after a mass murder (just as "Reservoir Dogs" opened immediately after a botched bank robbery) and then bouncing back and forth in time, assisted by old-fashioned "chapter headings." He immerses himself in his usual trash-pop culture (mostly Japanese this time around) and displays the casual technical craftiness of a master as his camera follows people up and down stairs, into and out of rooms, up to ceiling level or down on the floor, plus the standard eye-blink editing sequences favored nowadays. And some of his imagery is just plain gorgeous, like when the bloodsoaked tea room gives way to the hauntingly serene fake-snow nightscape. As always, he finds the music he wants. (Nothing by Shona Knife, unfortunately.)
A word about the violence: okay, yeah, it's violent---well, what were we expecting? But not nearly as violent/gory as it could have been. There's an entire sequence done in animation and another one that eases into black and white at a crucial moment. He deliberately uses the old-fashioned "squibs." (Imagine if Kubrick had done a decapitation, how scientifically accurate it would've been.) He manages to make his violence both painful and stylized, even weirdly playful at times. There's nothing here like the "sick" atmosphere that many people seemed to think was the end of civilization in the recent "House of 1000 Corpses," which actually had less violence/gore than "Kill Bill." Tarantino makes it clear this is a capital-B-Movie (with modern production values, of course)--a B-with-Balls. But I hope people also notice what a strong moral sense he has. I think it was no accident he used the term "medieval" in "Pulp Fiction." Remember the sequence beginning with the orderly and the big redneck entering Thurman's room, with the dialogue gradually revealing what's been going on over the four years of her coma. We see evil, and we see it get punished. He doesn't think he has to spell it out for us.
There's already controversy over the decision to divide this flick into two parts released several months apart. Personally I would've preferred one long movie with an intermission, to preserve the sweeping scope and emotional build-up, but I understand why these decisions get made. It wasn't that long ago that "Once Upon a Time in America" got butchered by businessmen contemptuous of the attention span and receptivity of the American MTV generation. If this is what it takes so we can see all the movie that Tarantino wanted us to see, so be it. He knows a lot is riding on this flick--he even kids it with the introduction "The 4th Film of..." (Actually it's four-and-a-quarter if you count his contribution to "Four Rooms," which would've been a lot better if he'd directed the whole thing.) He knows he's like the new Orson Welles who never went to film school or "worked his way up" through the biz. He knows the burden of having adjectives made out of his name, viz. "Tarantino-esque" or "post-Tarentino." He's heard all the personal crap & gossip about him. Well, he shrugged it all off and now tells us "Here's my movie, go see it if you want to." I for one think you should, even if you weren't "into" his stuff before. For sheer joyous audacious exuberance in filmmaking, there's no one like him today. And remember people, if we don't support him he may have to go work (aaarrrgh) OVERSEAS. He's ONE OF US, dammit, and I want him here.

Why hasn't Michael Parks had more work over the years? Bless Tarantino for remembering people like him and Robert Forster ("Jackie Brown") and as far as I'm concerned, John Travolta should be sending Tarantino a Christmas card every year, preferably with a check in it....