Saturday 19 October 2019

Kill Bill Volume 1 Review



Number 200 on the top 1000 films of all time is Quentin Tarantino’s martial arts thriller ‘Kill Bill Volume 1.’ I just happened to see this film on TV, hence why I’m reviewing it out of order.

The Bride (Uma Thurman) awakens after an assassination attempt by her former hit squad goes awry.  She vows revenge on her former colleagues including her boss.  (David Carradine)

Kill Bill pays homage to many of the grindhouse and martial arts films of the 60s and 70s.  However, I think it is more homage than actual film.  Of course, you would expect there to be elements of the genre present, but I think it was overdone.  Don’t get me wrong, the martial art scenes were brilliantly choregraphed, the Crazy-88 fight being the obvious example, but they became over-long and tedious.
I understand that the film focusses on martial arts, but the extended fight scenes did little to push the narrative forward.  And that is my main criticism of the film.  It was all more style than substance.

The narrative, as it was, was stretched very thin.  The Bride has a fight with the first member of her hit squad, Vernita Green, and then travels to Japan and has another fight with the Crazy-88 and then a final fight with the next hit squad member O-Ren (Lucy Liu.) Throw in some feet shots for good measure.  We’ll talk about this later.

I did think that the staging and cinematography were brilliant, especially with how the Crazy-88 fight was in monochrome and later silhouetted.  Also, while O’Ren’s backstory being depicted as an anime cartoon was certainly innovative, it became very familiar, after a while.  I was hungering for some actual narrative and fleshed-out characters.

Now is the time to talk about Uma Thurman’s feet.  It’s well-known that Tarantino has a foot fetish, but this is the first time that I’ve really been aware of it.  Did we really need to spend so much time looking at Thurman’s feet?

Ultimately, this is an enjoyable film to watch once, but how any substance gives way to style, does make it tedious after a while.

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