Kill Bill: Vol. 1
See also:
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (Uncle Cliff)
Is it a little too self-indulgent and gimmicky of me if I quote myself for this review?
Sorry, perhaps I should rephrase.
Is it any more self-indulgent and gimmicky of me than usual if I quote myself for this review?
Thought not. I just recently re-watched this film, but I noticed flicking through my review for Volume 2 (2004) that I crapped on about Volume 1 (2003) quite a bit, and virtually all the points I wanted to make here I already made there. Great minds think alike I guess. I figured if I was just going to repeat myself, I should at least be blunt about it.
From my review of Kill Bill Volume 2:
“There were those who complained Volume 1 was nothing but an hour and a half of plotless violence with little or no insights into the main character whose bloody revenge we were following. Then, there were those who loved it for that exact reason.”
I of course belong to the second camp. I remember sitting in the cinema when I saw this the first time and I was just wowed. Now “wowed” isn't the most masculine of words, but it is perhaps the most fitting. This film assaulted me, in all the right ways. Tarantino is up there with Scorsese in terms of “cool” cinema violence. I can know in my head that it may be gratuitous, and I could even probably write an essay on the negative social ramifications of such violence on the screen, but damn it's cool. He may borrow extensively from all over the place, but when he does he makes sure he ups the ante. The Crazy 88 fight scene at the film's end is without a doubt the most beautiful bloody massacre ever committed to film.
If I have any problems with Volume 1 it is at the start of the film. Not the first scene, but the credits that follow. Tarantino can obviously do anything he likes, and no one is going to tell him that it's a bad idea. Here they should have. The credits are the single most unnecessarily convoluted and completely self-indulgent thing I have seen in cinema for a long time. Each credit makes my eyes roll. Jesus, man, we know you have respect to pay to the films, filmmakers and genres that influenced this thing, but just get to the damn film please.
The scene that follows the credits however serves as an immediate reminder as to why he can get away with such frivolity. That would be the “…two-assassin's-sharing-a-coffee-in-the-middle-of-trying-to-kill-each-other” scene .
Why is this scene so great, you may ask?
Well, as a wise man once said, there is “lots of pathos and bountiful tension” as “you know hell will break loose at any moment but it is the disturbing calm before the storm and the casualness of their conversations in such circumstances that gives these characters so much of their definition, and it is their adherence to some kind of unspoken cowboy/samurai code that makes these cold-blooded killers all the more curious.”
Got that? Besides from a slight lull when The Bride visits a Japanese sushi bar that borders on slapstick goofiness, the rest of the film just blazes by, filled with awesome action and interesting anime sequences.
“I left the cinema from Kill Bill: Volume 1 exhilarated, not just because it was after of one of the finest, longest, well-crafted action scenes I have ever seen, but because it represented a return to a kind of ‘pure-cinema', where yes, the spectacle was the most important part.”
This still holds true on DVD. I just recently revisited the film by watching the Japanese version, notorious for keeping the entire Crazy 88 fight in it's full scarlet-saturated gory glory, which just added to the spectacle.
“The music and the visuals induced sensory stimulation that ‘event' movies of today, with their sole focus on the latest in computer-generated-images, just don't have a clue about.”
Crap, did I even mention Volume 2 in this original review? At all? As per usual Tarantino's choice of musical songs and cues is second to none. I would buy the soundtrack, but I've learned early on that the songs he uses are now so married to the images in his films, that listening to the music out of that context is a somewhat unsatisfying experience.
Kill Bill Volume 1, regardless of the more rambling and unfocused Volume 2, is a fantastic movie. I am very interested to see what happens when they inevitably get spliced together to make one long film. My gut tells me doing this will only reinforce how strong the first part is whilst drawing even more attention to the flaws of the second, but you never know with Tarantino. Some major changes could be made in the editing suite to prove me wrong.
I will conclude by quoting myself once more;
“I read somewhere someone's opinion that I liked where they said that Tarantino is the only example of a modern film-maker that can make both an excellent ‘film' and a ‘movie' with the same piece of cinema. Tarantino's melting-pot of action cinema reminded me that cinema can be wonderfully self-referencing without choking on itself.”
Yes, too true, too true. Unlike this review.