Skip to content
Dan Owen reviews
Miramax Home Entertainment
- Cert: R
- Cat.no: 32210
- Running time: 111 minutes
- Year: 2003
- Pressing: 2004
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1
- Languages: English, French
- Subtitles: English, French
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £14.99
- Extras:’The Making Of Kill Bill’ featurette, Quentin Tarantino movietrailers, 2 ‘The 5,6,7,8’s’ music videos.
Director:
- Quentin Tarantino
(Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown)
Producers:
- Lawrence Bender, Koko Maeda, Dede Nickerson, Kwame Parker, Erica Steinberg, E. Bennett Walsh, Bob Weinstein & Harvey Weinstein
Screenplay:
- Quentin Tarantino
(Based on the character ‘The Bride’, created by Quentin Tarantino & Uma Thurman)
Music:
- Takeshi Kobayashi
(“Wound That Heals”)The RZA & D.A. Young (“Armundo”)
Cinematographer:
- Robert Richardson
Cast:
- The Bride: Uma Thurman
Elle Driver: Daryl Hannah
Vernita Green: Vivica A. Fox
Bill: David Carradine
O-Ren Ishii: Lucy Liu
Hattori Hanzo: Sonny Chiba
Go-Go Yubari: Chiaki Kuriyama
Budd: Michael Madsen
Earl McGraw: Michael Parks
This is the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino, – well, better late than never.
Tarantino, the undoubted king of independent cinema throughout the ’90s,thanks to heist thrillerReservoir Dogsand gangster epic Pulp Fiction,wasin serious danger of having his crown reclaimed after apparently goingA.W.O.L after the release of 1997’sJackie Brown.But now, five years later,Tarantino has finally returned, blasting onto cinema screens with Kill BillVolume I, a vengeance-fuelled kung-fu epic.
Kill Bill Volume I continues the tradition of Tarantino’s love affair with’70s exploitation movies – this time focusing on the oriental passion forhigh-octane martial arts slug-fests.
Uma Thurman stars as “The Bride”, a pregnant member of the Deadly ViperAssassination Squad (DiVAS), whose fellow assassins rudely gatecrash herwedding, slaughter the congregation and leave her for dead. Years later, TheBride awakens from a coma and vows to avenge her marital bloodbath bysystematically murdering her ex-colleagues one-by-one… until she comesface-to-face with their leader, and ex-lover, the titular Bill (Carradine).
It’s a plot that has been trodden hundreds of times before in movies,particularly in the two genres Tarantino affectionately pays homage tothroughout this opus – Asian chop-socky and spaghetti westerns. As alwayswith Tarantino, the great pleasure in his work is how he manages to takeage-old plots and outdated styles and make them work for contemporaryaudiences. Kill Bill Volume I is a cinematic adrenaline rush of crash-zooms,snappy edits, poetic slow-motion, eclectic music, eye-popping gore andviolent Japanese animation.
Uma Thurman plays the nameless female assassin with great composure,managing to endow a fairly one-dimensional character with emotionalconviction and physical dexterity. The other characters, in Volume I anyway,almost become window dressing, but all are engagingly drawn paradigms ofevildoers: from Daryl Hannah‘s eye-patched bitch, Vivica A. Fox‘s spunkyhard-ass, to Lucy Liu‘s icy crime Queen of Tokyo. Other characters linger inthe darkness, glimpsed only in flashbacks – so judgment should be reservedfor Michael Madsen‘s Budd and David Carradine’s Bill until Volume II rollsinto town…
Taken as a single entity, Volume I is merely an appetiser for what willhopefully be a glorious main course. The infamous eleventh hour decision tochop the movie in two seems well judged, because Volume I manages not tooutstay its welcome and satisfy audiences without becoming monotonous due toits intrinsically simplistic “find and destroy” ethic. For all itsentertaining vibrancy, I doubt Kill Bill would work quite as well as fourhour odyssey.
So, in one-finger salute to cynics, Kill Bill Volume I is a resoundingsuccess, and should appeal to its target audience of young males and perhapsdraw in the clued-up older crowd who remember the 70’s source materialTarantino draws from and revamps for today’s MTV-generation.
As a director, Tarantino is clearly flexing his muscles with great bravadothroughout, managing to create some of the freshest fight sequences inrecent memory (stomping all overThe Matrix‘scomputer enhancements withconvincing stunts and old-fashioned camera prowess.) The only real complaintis the lack of Tarantino’s trademark dialogue – expected to return in VolumeII, high-kicking into cinemas at the time this review went online…
The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen picture is crystal clear and sumptuous tobehold – with no real flaws to speak of. A glorious example of what aprofessionally sampled DVD can achieve. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is alsoimpressive, with great range and handling of the sonic effects (check outGo-Go’s ball and chain), plus a general ease with Tarantino’s musical trackspeppered throughout the film.
Sadly, in the extra features department, Kill Bill Volume I is a verydisappointing disc from ‘Miramax’, undoubtedly to be improved upon withinthe year. The DVD only gives us one extra feature to speak of – ‘The MakingOf Kill Bill’. This is a frustratingly short featurette, but manages to packquite a lot of detail and interesting sound bites from all concerned -particularly Tarantino himself, who can always be relied upon to spin a goodmovie-making yarn. The eagle-eyed should also have fun spotting footage thatobviously comes from Volume II.
Elsewhere on the disc, there are two music videos featuring “The 5,6,7,8’s”,the band who featured in The House Of Blue Leaves chapter of the movie, andtrailers for every Tarantino film (including a Kill Bill Volume II teaser.)
And that’s basically your lot. The menu screens are nicely designed, ofcourse, but the lack of material on the disc is a big disappointment -particularly as Tarantino swore the DVD would be packed with goodies. Ofcourse, a ‘Special Edition’ disc or “twin pack” of both movies will probablyappear before the end of 2004, so aficionados may be best off renting VolumeI and only buying when a more comprehensive disc is released.
PLOT
PERFORMANCES
SPECIAL FX
MUSIC & SOUND
OVERALLSOUND
PACKAGING
MENU SCREENS
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.