Movie: Kill Bill Volume 1
Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu (Miramax)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

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Years ago I was amazed at how Monty Python made us laugh when King Arthur cut the arms and legs off the Black Knight, whose blood spurted mightily. Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill forces me to that same kind of amazement. He's made a terribly engaging piece of violence here, and yes, the limbs are flying and the blood is spurting everywhere again.

If you are a fan of Japanese anime or manga, you'll probably enjoy Kill Bill just for the swordplay, but at its core it's just another pulpy comic book story of revenge that teaches you nothing. Tarantino seems to realize that too and as if to underscore the point, he does an entire sequence in anime style to tell the story of Cottonmouth, Lucy Liu's character. Uma Thurman plays The Bride, the central character in all this. Central character? Well, one certainly can't call her the heroine because she does nothing that's heroic. There's no mystery to solve either, she knows exactly who she's going after. The only question is which henchman gets it next.

Okay, I understand it's an homage to Zatoichi and all the other Asian martial arts movies I used to watch, but there's nothing really new that's added to the genre besides a whole lot of special effects. Action movies can pull me in if they offer something beyond the fight scenes; the first Die Hard movie always engages me because there is a bit of heroism, travail and righteous anger amid the mayhem. Kill Bill doesn't have any similarly redeeming qualities. Tarantino is just indulging in his violent choreography and he doesn't even play up the absurdity of it all as much as he did in Pulp Fiction. In the end I wonder, why am I watching this?

The Skinny:
Am I glad I saw the film? I can respect the craft this took, but mostly I was glad when it stopped.
Would I go to see it again? I'm sure Volumes 2 and 3 and 4 will be the same movie again, so who needs to see Volume 1 twice?

© 2003 - Rusty Pipes