Kill Bill: Volume 1
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Quentin Tarantino |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Volume 1 |
| Distributor | Miramax |
| Honors | |
| Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is trash for connoisseurs. From his opening gambit (including a “Shaw-Scope” logo and gaudy ‘70s-vintage “Our Feature Presentation” title card) to his cliffhanger finale (a teasing lead-in to 2004’s Vol. 2), Tarantino pays loving tribute to grindhouse cinema, specifically the Hong Kong action flicks and spaghetti Westerns that fill his fervent brain—and this frequently breathtaking movie—with enough cinematic references and cleverly pilfered soundtrack cues to send cinephiles running for their reference books.… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is trash for connoisseurs. From his opening gambit (including a “Shaw-Scope” logo and gaudy ‘70s-vintage “Our Feature Presentation” title card) to his cliffhanger finale (a teasing lead-in to 2004’s Vol. 2), Tarantino pays loving tribute to grindhouse cinema, specifically the Hong Kong action flicks and spaghetti Westerns that fill his fervent brain—and this frequently breathtaking movie—with enough cinematic references and cleverly pilfered soundtrack cues to send cinephiles running for their reference books. Everything old is new again in Tarantino’s humor-laced vision: he steals from the best while injecting his own oft-copied, never-duplicated style into what is, quite simply, a revenge flick, beginning with the near-murder of the Bride (Uma Thurman), pregnant on her wedding day and left for dead by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS)—including Lucy Liu and the unseen David Carradine (as Bill)—who become targets for the Bride’s lethal vengeance. Culminating in an ultraviolent, ultra-stylized tour-de-force showdown, Tarantino’s fourth film is either brilliantly (and brutally) innovative or one of the most blatant acts of plagiarism ever conceived. Either way, it’s hyperkinetic eye-candy from a passionate film-lover who clearly knows what he’s doing. —Jeff Shannon
Barnes and Noble
Oddly billed as “The 4th Film by Quentin Tarantino,” Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is the film-geek auteur’s self-consciously ostentatious fusion of American gangster movies, Japanese manga, and Chinese martial-arts films. Willowy Uma Thurman stars as a female assassin targeted for extinction on her wedding day by former coworkers under the direction of her mysterious old boss, Bill (David Carradine). After spending years in a coma, she unexpectedly revives and sets out to wreak vengeance on the killers who murdered her loved ones. Vivica A. Fox and Lucy Liu are the first team members to feel Uma’s wrath, and there are more to follow, presumably in Vol. 2. (Shortly before release, the epic film was cut into two shorter parts.) There’s no more plot than this; Tarantino presents just enough exposition to prepare the viewer for a succession of over-the-top fight scenes, each more outlandish than the last. His visual and aural references to various films are too numerous to count, although you don’t have to be familiar with the other movies to enjoy this one. Kill Bill represents the director at his dynamic best: Totally unrestrained and supremely self-assured, Tarantino has manufactured a great big gob of eye candy—a flamboyantly excessive piece of entertainment that reflects not just his reverence for movies but also his love of the filmmaking process. Remarkably, the movie lacks the witty, hard-boiled dialogue that helped build Tarantino’s fan base. Not that it’s really missed, as the fast-paced, blood-soaked mayhem manages to mesmerize just the same, and certainly whets appetite for Vol. 2. Ed Hulse
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