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Extras:
'The Making Of Kill Bill' featurette, Quentin Tarantino movie
trailers, 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 thriller
Reservoir Dogs
and gangster epic
Pulp Fiction,
was
in serious danger of having his crown reclaimed after apparently going
A.W.O.L after the release of 1997's
Jackie Brown.
But now, five years later,
Tarantino has finally returned, blasting onto cinema screens with Kill Bill
Volume 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 for
high-octane martial arts slug-fests.
Uma Thurman stars as "The Bride", a pregnant member of the Deadly Viper
Assassination Squad (DiVAS), whose fellow assassins rudely gatecrash her
wedding, slaughter the congregation and leave her for dead. Years later, The
Bride awakens from a coma and vows to avenge her marital bloodbath by
systematically murdering her ex-colleagues one-by-one... until she comes
face-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 to
throughout this opus - Asian chop-socky and spaghetti westerns. As always
with Tarantino, the great pleasure in his work is how he manages to take
age-old plots and outdated styles and make them work for contemporary
audiences. Kill Bill Volume I is a cinematic adrenaline rush of crash-zooms,
snappy edits, poetic slow-motion, eclectic music, eye-popping gore and
violent Japanese animation.
Uma Thurman plays the nameless female assassin with great composure,
managing to endow a fairly one-dimensional character with emotional
conviction and physical dexterity. The other characters, in Volume I anyway,
almost become window dressing, but all are engagingly drawn paradigms of
evildoers: from Daryl Hannah's eye-patched bitch, Vivica A. Fox's spunky
hard-ass, to Lucy Liu's icy crime Queen of Tokyo. Other characters linger in
the darkness, glimpsed only in flashbacks - so judgment should be reserved
for Michael Madsen's Budd and David Carradine's Bill until Volume II rolls
into town...
Taken as a single entity, Volume I is merely an appetiser for what will
hopefully be a glorious main course. The infamous eleventh hour decision to
chop the movie in two seems well judged, because Volume I manages not to
outstay its welcome and satisfy audiences without becoming monotonous due to
its intrinsically simplistic "find and destroy" ethic. For all its
entertaining vibrancy, I doubt Kill Bill would work quite as well as four
hour odyssey.
So, in one-finger salute to cynics, Kill Bill Volume I is a resounding
success, and should appeal to its target audience of young males and perhaps
draw in the clued-up older crowd who remember the 70's source material
Tarantino draws from and revamps for today's MTV-generation.
As a director, Tarantino is clearly flexing his muscles with great bravado
throughout, managing to create some of the freshest fight sequences in
recent memory (stomping all over
The Matrix's
computer enhancements with
convincing stunts and old-fashioned camera prowess.) The only real complaint
is the lack of Tarantino's trademark dialogue - expected to return in Volume
II, high-kicking into cinemas at the time this review went online...
The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen picture is crystal clear and sumptuous to
behold - with no real flaws to speak of. A glorious example of what a
professionally sampled DVD can achieve. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is also
impressive, with great range and handling of the sonic effects (check out
Go-Go's ball and chain), plus a general ease with Tarantino's musical tracks
peppered throughout the film.
Sadly, in the extra features department, Kill Bill Volume I is a very
disappointing disc from 'Miramax', undoubtedly to be improved upon within
the year. The DVD only gives us one extra feature to speak of - 'The Making
Of Kill Bill'. This is a frustratingly short featurette, but manages to pack
quite a lot of detail and interesting sound bites from all concerned -
particularly Tarantino himself, who can always be relied upon to spin a good
movie-making yarn. The eagle-eyed should also have fun spotting footage that
obviously 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, and
trailers for every Tarantino film (including a Kill Bill Volume II teaser.)
And that's basically your lot. The menu screens are nicely designed, of
course, but the lack of material on the disc is a big disappointment -
particularly as Tarantino swore the DVD would be packed with goodies. Of
course, a 'Special Edition' disc or "twin pack" of both movies will probably
appear before the end of 2004, so aficionados may be best off renting Volume
I and only buying when a more comprehensive disc is released.
THE MOVIE
DIRECTION PLOT PERFORMANCES SPECIAL FX MUSIC & SOUND
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Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
