Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

KILL BILL: VOL. 1 (2003) 3 1/2 stars out of 4. Starring Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Darryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba, Michael Parks, Julie Dreyfuss and Chiaki Kuriyama. Music by The RZA. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Rated R. Runnng time: Approx. 110 mins.

I am split like one of The Bride's samurai sword victims over Kill Bill: Vol. 1. The "intellectual" adult side of this reviewer was taken aback by the mindless violence, the fountains of blood, the cartoonish quality of the entire feature.

Ah, but the movie buff kid in me appreciated writer-director Quentin Tarantino's excesses, his homages to Asian martial arts films, the 1970s blaxploitation genre, spaghetti Westerns and Japanese samurai adventures.

No matter how you feel about this film, or about Tarantino for that matter, you have to admire his understanding of the nuances and conventions of those genres and his ability to adapt them into a wonderfully over-the-top, comic opera of vengeance.

For Kill Bill is all about style and reference. Tarantino's talent rests with the ability to click into the viewer's movie-going experience like a TV remote and rekindle memories of earlier film favorites.

Tarantino, making his first movie in five years, throws a virtual cinematic smorgasbord onto the screen: Japanese anime, wire work, bullet time, slow motion. You applaud more for the technique than for the story.

Speaking of which, the plot of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 centers on The Bride, a former assassin shot and left for dead at her wedding by her boss, Bill (David Carradine) and her fellow DIVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad).

However, the Bride (Uma Thurman) has survived and four years later awakes from a coma intent on revenge.

Volume 1 deals with her confrontations with two of her former allies, Copperhead a k a Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) and Cottonmouth a k a O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), now the boss of bosses of the Japanese yakuza underworld.

More than any movie in recent memory, Kill Bill fits the bill as a live-action comic book. No grays, only blacks and whites, good people and bad people.

It is storytelling at its simplest, primal level.

Homages abound throughout, from the casting of such people as Michael Parks and Sonny Chiba in supporting roles to musical cues from pop culture TV shows, blaxploitation flicks and Italian Westerns. Tarantino borrows the extreme eye close-ups made famous by Sergio Leone and the circular motion camera style seen during hand-to-hand duels in many Hong Kong action movies.

Oh yes, the performances. Thurman is quite good as the vengeful Black Mamba. It does not take long to accept this beauty as an action hero; she's lean and definitely mean as well as athletic.

 Fox is tough in her small role, while Liu is a joy as the queen bee of
crime.

The movie ends on a cliffhanger that will be resolved when Vol. 2 is released in February. At about 110 minutes, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is not so fast as it is furious.

Heads roll, arms and legs get hacked off, blood erupts like a Yellowstone Park geyser, but the action is so quick, so ludicrous that you can almost look at this feature as a black comedy -- or at least a very red one.

Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bbloom@journalandcourier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net. Other reviews by Bloom can be found at www.jconline.com by clicking on movies. Bloom's reviews also appear on the Web at the Rottentomatoes Web site, www.rottentomatoes.com and at the Internet Movie Database: http://www.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom

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X-RT-RatingText: 3.5/4