If Revenge is a Dish, Kill Bill Vol.1 is Lip-Smacking Delicious!

Rating: 9/10 (31 March 2015)

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is Quentin Tarantino's giddy homage to the movies he grew up with—the Hong Kong chop-sockies, the spaghetti Westerns, the Yakuza-samurai actioners, the Japanese anime and the American blaxploitation flicks, reshaped by the writer-director as a sort of reverie of adolescent enthusiasms.
The plot has a direct-action vividness suitable for a video game that walks a pretty straight path, especially for a Tarantino film. Cleverly constructed in five labeled chapters, from "The Blood- Spattered Bride" to "Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves," the movie expounds the tale of The Bride (Uma Thurman with the look of a chiseled humanoid, in a physically arduous role) whose rural El Paso wedding is invaded by The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and turned into a bloodbath, leaving her trembling and bloodied. Four years later, rising out of her comatose state, she sets out on an unwavering mission to systematically eliminate her former cohorts one by one, beginning with the now domesticized Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), and the formidable O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), before tracking down Bill (David Carradine), the eponymous focus of her vengeance.
Firmly in fan-boy mode here, Tarantino prepares his revenge dish like a skilled chef, chopping and tossing it in an astounding spectacle that's as alluring as the meal itself. And because it's Tarantino, the bloodletting is in full flow. With heads severed and arms lopped off, he pelts us with stylistic jabs even as spouts of red spray the screen. It is a homage all right, but with an extra dollop of ketchup! Tarantino relies on delirious, high-octane camera work, an exhilarating musical soundtrack and wonderfully choreographed sequences (watch O-Ren's origin story told as a spectacularly brutal 7-minute anime or the designed-to-be-legendary showdown between the Bride and the Crazy 88s or the final confrontation between the kimono-clad Ishii and The Bride against the floating snow-flakes) to punch up a story that never loses its intoxicating magnetism.
Kill Bill is Tarantino's highly idiosyncratic and deeply personal excursion into a world of movie-inspired unreality. An unapologetic pulp scribe, Tarantino thinks nothing of dropping scores of allusions to the beloved pop culture of his youth into The Bride's universe. Kill Bill Vol. 1 is Tarantino in vintage form!