Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth

**1/2 (out of ****)

It's altogether possible that Volume 2 of Quentin Tarantino's martial arts actioner slash gore fest "Kill Bill" (due February 2004) contains those elusive elements of plot, tension, and character development that are sorely missing from Volume 1 (now playing at a theater near you).

     But I suspect not.

I suspect that would have required a much heavier editing schedule than Tarantino had anticipated. I suspect he simply cut his film straight down the middle, in much the same way as Uma Thurman (coolly playing a vengeful, blood-spattered hit woman) dispatches many of her assailants--whack!, one strike of her ornately detailed samurai sword, straight down the middle.

No, I suspect Volume 2 will be very similar to Volume 1. Long on style and short on just about everything else.

There's no denying that Tarantino is a master visual stylish though. Absent from the screen (at least as feature film director) since 1997's "Jackie Brown," the infamous former-video-store-clerk-turned-bloody-auteur had heretofore raised cinematic bloodletting to a level approaching art (see his first two features, "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction," for corroboration).

Much has been made of Tarantino's absence and "Kill Bill" is self-consciously prefaced as "The 4th film by Quentin Tarantino" in case we had run out of fingers (or ears!) to count on. That's as may be, but "Kill Bill Vol. 1" (as it's referred to onscreen) is only partially satisfying. Intriguing, yes. Visually impressive, certainly. Artful and creative and finely acted and anachronistically scored (by The RZA), mostly. But worth catching? Only maybe.

Volume 1 plays more like a violent video game than a fully rounded moviegoing experience with a beginning, middle, and end (boy does Quentin like his shifts in time's continuum). If you're into shoot 'em ups and don't mind your firearms replaced by swords, knives, and other sharp objects then yes, you'll probably go gaga over it. And if you're into Japanese Anime you'll most likely enjoy it too (Tarantino actually crafts one of his expository chapters in the ultraviolent cartoon style of such animated classics as "Akira" and "Tetsuo: The Ironman").

Supremely crafted as far as its looks are concerned, "Kill Bill Vol. 1" is like a word processing document in which every other word is in a different typeface. The credits themselves reflect this--large and small fonts, color and black and white, subtitles and caption boards, some of them in-jokey and needlessly redundant.

"Kill Bill" is essentially a spaghetti western-influenced chopsocky revenge saga in which The Bride (aka Black Mamba), pregnant and left for dead at her own nuptials when her boss Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad turn the tables on her, seeks violent retribution.

In Vol. 1 it's Vernita Green aka Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox) and O-Ren Ishii aka Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu) who get their just desserts. Vividly. Presumably that leaves Elle Driver aka California Mountain Snake (Darryl Hannah), Budd aka Sidewinder (Michael Madsen), and Bill himself (the dislocated voice of David Carradine in this go round) for Vol. 2. Since Ms. Fox is sliced and diced in the opening moments of Vol. 1 that leaves for a lot of padding before The Bride can get to Liu's heavily guarded Yakuza crime boss (the multiplying Mr. Smiths of "The Matrix Reloaded" spring to mind in a sequence that more closely resembles something the Monty Python gang--rather than Bruce Lee--might have conjured up, with blood cascading from wounds opened by severed heads and limbs).

I was entertained by all this to a point, until I realized that's *all* there was. And then I lost interest. Well, in Volume 2 that's for sure.

--
David N. Butterworth
dnb@dca.net

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