Chapter 1: Six Years Ago

When I was a teenager, there was just nothing cooler than a Quentin Tarantino flick. In our childish naivete we came to idolize his characters: foul-mouthed, stylistic gangsters with a penchant for overindulging in violence, and for giving those damn 'PIGS' some righteous reciprocity. Tarantino's films were made with an energy and force akin to the rabid, radically metaphysical energy of puberty: a change from the spastic yet careless energy of childhood to the controlled anger, angst, and insecurity of early adulthood.

And then he made Jackie Brown. And I lost respect. There was no energy, no angst, little if any epic violence. A standard fare underworld film with drugs, quirky low-lifes and morose ne'er-do-wells. The last 15 minutes were cool, chock-full of the Tarantino's trademark and unorthodox style, but who wants to sit through nearly 2 hours of mindless dialogue, hopelessly pathetic romance, and a few choice comedic moments? I, for one, didn't. I felt abused, let down, betrayed. That was six years ago.

Chapter 2: Present Day

Kill Bill: Volume 1.

Because good movies shouldn't be confined to only two hours.

A blood-soaked face, shrouded with a wedding veil, wheezing with final breath and desperation. Is calmly cleaned by a white handkerchief with the name 'Bill' stitched into the corner. The congealed blood and make-up lump together in a grotesque perversion of a wedding makeover. A few short words, the sound of a gun. Blood everywhere. Not your typical wedding ceremony. A bride, and her party, gunned down by the thugs she used to work with.

This movie goes from bloody to bloodier to damn this is the bloodiest movie I've every seen. But more like a b-grade horror film kind of bloody. Not the realistic Saving Private Ryan bloody, the kind of bloody so unrealistic, so juvenile, it makes you laugh, if only to help you make sense of everything.

You can't take this movie seriously.

Kill Bill is a spoof, if anything else, a pastiche of late 70's Kung Fu, Mafioso crime dramas, and Charlie's Angels stylized uber-women assassin movies. The sorts of things we should be laughing at, the outrageous ideas of a gilded decade that gave birth to the selfish nihilism of the 80's and 90's.

'The Bride' (Uma Thurman), aka 'Black Mamba', wakes from a coma four years after her fated wedding, and makes quick work of two sexual predators who have been using her comatose body as a play toy. Her only desire: Kill Bill. Her fateful betrayer, and everyone else even remotely associated with Bill (David Carradine) and his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad must die.

Tarantino has birthed a movie with impeccable style. Everything is ultra-hip, fluently transcultural, and archetypically interrelated. Which is quite a feat, given Tarantino's desire to make Kill Bill a conjoined child of so many different genres, styles, and ideas. Somehow he keeps it together, but in so doing, creates something radically different, equally as absurd, yet infinitely cooler. God, I wish I were a teenager again. The sum is greater than its constituent parts.

A subtle profusion of oddities:

A knife fight in middle-American suburbia between the Bride and a Viper-gone-housewife Vernita Green (Vivicia Fox). A reluctant, retired sword smith Hattori Hanzo (Kung Fu movie legend "Sonny Chiba"), now running a sketchy sushi bar in Okinawa, is coaxed back into service if only to make the sword that will end Bill's life. Tarantino's use of anime to provide a history for the Viper-gone-Yakuza O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu).

The high water mark of this film:

The bloodiest, most rampant fight scene ever filmed. The Bride faces off against O-Ren Ishii and her gang of Yakuza swordsmen, the Crazy 88 Fighters. No holds barred, the Bride and her Hanzo steel take on, well, just about everyone. The overly graphic dismemberment, horribly grotesque profusion of blood, and outright evil choreography makes even the Matrix's best look like some pathetic middle school fist fight behind the gym during recess.

Chapter 3: The Dirty Conclusion

Tarantino is the first filmmaker to illustrate our cultural dependence upon Japanese popular culture. Or rather the fact that our cultures have influenced each other to such an extreme that we fail to see the difference between the two. Sleek motorcycles with Katanas strapped to the seats. Sushi bars blaring rockabilly dance music. Japanese-Americans running the Yakuza. A Texas accented Bill wielding a Katana and gunning down his bride in El Paso. In Tarantino's world, nothing is distinct, everything is interrelated. There are no cultures, just pop culture. A grand zeitgeist of hyper-style and old school disco. A world that could only exist behind a Hollywood camera and a deranged filmmaker's imagination. A world that will, paradoxically, become more real for us than reality itself due to our fickle tendency to imitate the films we watch, if only in our minds.

I loved Kill Bill. It wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen. But definitely as good as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, though I wouldn't want to make too many comparisons between these movies--they represent different worlds, different ideas, different styles. A radically fresh take on martial arts, culture, style and violence: Kill Bill offers the movie-goer an experience radically distinct from most all of the crap permeating throughout our Hollywood culture, deluding our theater experiences, and making life generally not worth living. Tarantino shows us a valuable truism: creative, great filmmaking doesn't have to be serious, boring and overly intellectualized. And with two Vipers down and three left to kill we can only hope Volume II will be even better, if not bloodier.



Recommended: Yes