It starts with both a bang and a whimper. The whimper is supplied by a shivering bride (Uma Thurman), whose entire wedding party has just been murdered at the altar. The bang comes from Bill, whose slithery voice tells the pregnant bride to go easy as he plants a bullet in her head. She pleads for her life and the life of her unborn daughter, revealing that Bill may be the father. But, to no avail. Bill fires, blood splatters in glorious black and white and the opening credits begin to roll as Nancy Sinatra’s intoxicatingly moody “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” simmers away on the audio.
Two minutes into “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and director Quentin Tarantino already has you in the palm of his hand.
The plot is simple. “The Bride” (her real name is never revealed and is cheekily bleeped on the soundtrack when other characters say it) somehow survives her truncated nuptials, only to honeymoon in a local hospital as she languishes in a four-year coma. When she finally awakens, she seeks revenge on Bill and his group of hired killers, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (of which, she was formerly a member before leaving the business to seek a better life). The Bride must track down her former co-workers and dispose of them one by one until she can ultimately-you guessed it-kill Bill!
This is not a movie about story or character. Only the Bride’s motivations are clear, and she is defined solely by her undying need for revenge. The audience learns very little about the psychology of the film’s characters but very much about the psychology of its impish director. The stars of the show here are Tarantino, his indefatigable knowledge of cinema and pop culture and his undeniable sense of style. Rarely has a film been so unapologetically and so successfully emblematic of the phrase “style over substance.”
Much media attention has been focused on the violence in this film, and it is extreme to be sure. Heads fly, bones crunch, arteries explode in fountains of gushing red lifeblood. But in the film’s defense, overkill may, in fact, be the point.
The bloodshed is excessive yet never feels realistic. It’s played for humor and for sheer absurdity. Tarantino seems to have anticipated that the carnage would be (and should be) branded cartoonish and lets the audience know he’s in on the joke, nowhere more so than in a mid-film anime sequence that positively drips with gore.
“Kill Bill: Volume One” plays less like a fluid narrative and more like what it actually is-a wide-eyed homage to the things that made Quentin Tarantino who he is today. Mostly, it’s a riff on the martial arts films of the ’70s, exploiting and cajoling the conventions of the genre in some truly inventive ways, all the while staying true to the old-school formula of action over dialogue, kick-ass-first-ask-questions-later.
Yet Tarantino merges East and West with wholly American references to subjects as diverse as Klingons and Trix cereal. And the director’s soundtrack selections are as evocative and eclectic as ever, this time encompassing everything from Isaac Hayes to RZA, Bernard Hermann to Zamfir.
The result is a world steeped in reverent nostalgia yet not strictly bound by it, a surreal, timeless setting where anything can happen and very often does.
Though the Q-Man is firing on all cylinders here, his collaborators deserve a great deal of credit as well. Editor Sally Menke’s crisp cuts and fades sometimes elevate the film to stunning visual poetry, but not without the beautiful, richly colorful lensing of cinematographer Robert Richardson, whose work is equally brilliant whether he’s shooting a sun-bleached Texas desert or a snowy garden somewhere in moonlit Tokyo.
And, special mention must be made of the great Woo-ping Yuen (see also “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and the “Matrix” series), whose fight choreography is so kinetic-so strong-that audience members can almost believe Uma Thurman could successfully swordfight her way through a mob of 88 screaming Japanese henchmen.
Tarantino still uses disjointed chronology as a storytelling technique better than anyone in the business, yet this time it leads his film to a bit of an anticlimax.
The audience knows from the get-go that the Bride has taken out two Vipers and who those newly deceased assassins are. The rest of the film simply fills in the blanks, showing “how” it all happened and only letting slip a little of the all-important “why.”
One could further complain that the film is only one half of a larger story and that it feels unfinished, dependent on a cliffhanger ending to lure us back into the theater for the second installment. Seemingly, though, Tarantino is simply saving his trump cards for “Volume Two.” While “Volume One” stands on its own as the penultimate pulp throwaway, it hints at a deeper, more reflective conclusion, one in which reasons for actions are provided and dissected and those who have sinned will get exactly what they karmically deserve.
Though not for all audiences, “Kill Bill: Volume One” is hypnotic, a breathtakingly artful exploitation film (if such a thing can exist) that stands as an event movie that actually lives up to its pre-release hype.
Tarantino’s mastery of craft is mesmerizing and infectiously exciting, and his latest effort is great sinister fun. Miss this one and you’ll miss one of the year’s best.