TITLE: Archive Review: Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) AUTHOR: Joe Johnson DATE: 6:56:00 AM ----- BODY:

Dir: Quentin Tarantino

Tarantino has been called the next Orson Welles - whatever that really means. Despite a multitude of similarities with that legend, something is altogether different. Until the desperate later years, no one could imagine Welles being bound to popular culture and low-budget martial arts films. Welles seems cosmopolitan - commenting on the United States while remaining an heir of great European filmmaking. Tarantino is undeniably American. Like the Beach Boys or Elvis, you could never look at his work and imagine it originating anywhere else.

With Kill Bill, Tarantino starts to resemble another director: Oliver Stone. There was something about Platoon and Wall Street that seemed promising and vital. When JFK emerged, Stone’s private passions saturated his filmmaking. He laced his conspiratorial paranoias with a variety of film-grades, experimental narratives, and divergent perspectives. But from that point Stone’s work has seemed to be works of indulgence (consider On Any Given Sunday). Kill Bill is Tarantino’s JFK. It is a work of indulgence and vigorous creativity. It could just as easily herald a trend towards self-destructive excess. It is a pinnacle work, but it is an unrestrained work.

Any attempt to describe Kill Bill in a word, must be style. With the opening moments, the joy of originality from Pulp Fiction’s diner scene - the most intriguing initial dialogue in a film since The Godfather - returns. It is indescribably Tarantino. Somehow we know it is him and would recognize it anywhere. There are very few directors who are so apparent. Maybe Hitchcock. Maybe Allen. Maybe Kurosawa. Definitely Tarantino.

The film has little plot - only what it needs. This is a story of revenge, but sometimes that very word carries such power and possibility that it can be as interesting as Hamlet. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is the central character. We know very quickly that a group of assassins killed her wedding party, her unborn child and presumed her dead. Nearly five years later, she has awakened seeking their lives. The story is simple enough: she tracks the five of them down beginning with Oren-Ischi (Lucy Liu), culminating in her old boss, Bill (David Carradine), presumably to be encountered in Volume 2.

The brilliant re-definer of crime/action films draws from different sources, but the experience is familiar. Rather than the crime novels of Elmore Leonard, Tarantino looks toward Westerns and Hong Kong action films. He writes a story that draws from the foundation of Charlie’s Angels (a thought he offered us through Uma Thurman’s tale of a failed television pilot in Pulp Fiction). He merges it with Kurosawa-esque legends of samurai and revenge and mixes in a strange blend of Charles Bronson heroism and Isaac Hayes bravado. The strength of Tarantino is his ability to take all of these influences and form a fresh voice. With the possible exception of Jackie Brown, a Tarantino film is not forgettable.

Kill Bill, despite drawing from a variety of Saturday afternoon B-films and television kung-fu movies, is fresh. It is about the sum of the parts and the joy of the journey. This also means that it can only be compared to Tarantino. Standing next to Pulp Fiction there is something less than landmark in this work. Perhaps it is because it is only half of a film. Perhaps it is that Pulp Fiction is such an inventive and utterly unrepeatable movie (the curse of Citizen Kane) that Kill Bill could not hope to live up to such a standard.

Tarantino’s famed dialogues are more sparse, though his visuals are enhanced. He injects an anime sequence that is appropriate but overlong. Rather than slight exaggerations, Kill Bill is saturated in highly comic violence featuring gallons of blood and spurting arteries. Pulp Fiction was all about very normal and limited people in traditionally glamorized and romanticized situations. Kill Bill is about the special and glamorous. Uma Thurman can get cut and bleed pints, but, other than in flashes back to the wedding massacre, she never approaches the brokenness or vulnerability of Pulp Fiction’s Mrs. Wallace.

Tarantino considers Thurman to be his muse, and it shows. It’s a wonder that no one has found a way to use her since 1994. The woman who played Venus in Terry Gilliam’s Baron Munchauesen photographs with such vividness, she is perfect for the film’s stylized presence. When she dawns Bruce Lee’s yellow jump suit, there is something iconic. With Kill Bill the courage of Tarantino to risk his career becomes apparent. He holds nothing back, and though this does not work with perfection, there is something undeniably refreshing and powerful about it.

**** of *****

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