Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2 (Box Set) Review

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(More customer reviews)Once upon a time in El Paso, Texas a wedding party is slaughtered execution style. However, it turns out that the Bride (Uma Thurman), who is pregnant, is not dead but in a coma. Four years later she wakes up, no longer pregnant, in time to save herself from insult being added to her injury. Then the Bride puts together her list of people to kill: (1) Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), (2) O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), (3) Budd (Michael Madsen), (4) Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), and (5) Bill (David Carradine). In "Kill Bill, Volume 1," the Bride only gets to the first two names on her list, albeit not in that order the way the film is cut, and then proceeds to the rest in Volume 2. This does not constitute a spoiler because you cannot have a film called "Kill Bill" that does at least get to the title character, regardless of the results. But then this was a do-it-yourself "Box Set" (I bought the two DVDs and they gave me a box to put together).
There is more happening in the each film besides the kill list, such as an anime telling us how O-Ren Ishii became the Queen of the Tokyo underworld and the training sequence in which the Bride studies with the great Pai Mei. But in the first film the primary emphasis is on how the Bride takes out her first two victims and the triumph of style as substance, especially when style means fountains of blood gushing from human beings that would make Akira Kurosawa proud. With "Pulp Fiction" Tarantino made his impression upon our ears with scene after scene of great dialogue. No wonder the soundtrack for that film had clips of some of what came rolling off the tongues of the actors (usually Samuel L. Jackson, who only plays a corpse in these films). But with "Kill Bill, Volume 1" Tarantino's blood feast is mostly for the eyes. This film is not for everybody, but then what Quentin Tarantino film ever was?
The biggest complain about Volume 1 is that it has the two most memorable sequences in the entire epic, namely watching O-Ren Ishii and her posse walk glide into the House of Blue Leaves with the blasting soundtrack giving them energy and the final showdown in an exquisite garden at night with gently falling snow where O-Ren in her white kimono and the Bride in her yellow biker suit do their dance of death with Japanese steel. Nothing in Volume 2 tops either of those scenes, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just a cinematic reality.
The caveat when Mirimax decided to split this four-hour revenge film into two volumes was that those who sensed a lack of character development and motivation in Volume 1 would be appeased by what was put forth in Volume 2, and this is indeed the case. We finally get to go back and see a couple of pivotal scenes set before the "beginning" of the film's opening, such as the massacre at the Two Pines wedding chapel. The net result is that character is more important than killing in the last half of the film, which makes sense because it would really be virtually impossible for the Bride to slice and dice more opponents than she did at the House of Blue Leaves.
I watched Volume 1 on DVD again before I went to see Volume 2 in the theater, which I thought would put me perfectly in the narrative flow. However, Quentin Tarantino has set up his audience just to play with their minds, which, of course, is what he was doing from the start and at the climax of this film I was not at all sure who, if anyone, was going to come out alive. Certainly what happens with numbers 3 and 4 are not what you expected after seeing the fate of numbers 1 and 2, but that certainly puts what happens with the final name on the list up for grabs.

There are a lot of oppositions between the two halves of this film. The beautiful setting of the duel between the Bride and O-ren in the gentle falling snow is countered by the showdown with Budd (Michael Madsen) in the harsh sunlight of his trailer in the desert. Having devoted an entire chapter to Hattori Hanzo creating his most perfect sword for the Bride, it is amazing how hard it is to get the sword out of its scabbard in this one. Volume 1 was a feast for the eyes, but in Volume 2 Tarantino's dialogue becomes more prominent, although not quite up to the level of "Pulp Fiction." But the dialogue is important because before we get around to the titular business of this film, the Bride and Bill have got to have themselves a conversation. Sound also matters more in this film: there is one sequence that is effectively done in the dark.
I am barely acquainted with the genre of Hong Kong films that Tarantino was apparently weaned on, so everything is fairly new to me and consequently smacks more of homage than parody, which is no doubt the director's intent. I probably will not go out and check out some of the films that inspired Tarantino to do "Kill Bill" which have been pointed out to me, because they will undoubtedly pale in comparison to the slicked up version that he is serving for our American palates. All things considered, I have a definite preference for Volume 1, which seems to run counter to the prevailing sentiments, but it took me a while to be comfortable with how the two parts fit together. The key thing is that they do, without Volume 2 being simply more of the same, because it is definitely not. There is something to be said for Tarantino pulling out all the stops just to have fun.

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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.

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