MovieReview: "Kill Bill: Volume One"

title: "Kill Bill: Volume One"

starring: Uma Thurman, Darryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, David Carradine, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Parks, Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kuriyama, Julie Dreyfus

genre: action kung-fu

Applause is in order for director Quentin Tarantino's latest offbeat picture, "Kill Bill." The movie, which is a plethora of kung-fu gore, black comedy, voluminous blood, and zig-zagging cinematography, is a tried-and-true soap operatic masterpiece. But that's getting ahead of the point. Tarantino, who zoomed to cult status with the pop-king "Pulp Fiction," spent more than five years creating this flurried project of his. In fact, "Kill Bill" was concieved on the set of "Pulp Fiction" - a conglomeration of Tarantino's spastic imagaination and Uma Thurman's support and suggestions. So, almost ten years later, here it is: the long-awaited defected birth-child of an undisputed brilliant director.

"Kill Bill" is at heart a story of simple revenge; Thurman stars as "The Bride," a woman whose asscoiates in an underground guerillia club turn on her, and try to end her life by a bullet in the brain. At the helm is Bill (Carradine), a mysterious manifestation of evil and truth who was trained as a samurai in Tokyo. Also in the club were O-ren Ishi (Liu), Elle Driver (Hannah), Vernita Green (Fox), and Budd (Madsen), all associates of Bill, and all kung-fu experts. When it's found out that the Bride is still alive (Note: Another Tarantinoian quirk is that Uma Thurman's character's real name is bleeped out in the first volume), all the members try to finish the Bride, before she enacts revenge.

So why the crossing in the first place? Well, we're not told in the first volume, and that leads to an annoying hole that covers the film like a black cloud. But plot and purpose is hard to concentrate on when your watching a graphic montage of decapitations, rapes, shootings, stabbings, and all-out frenetic, kinetic action. "Kill Bill" is actually meant to be a flamboyant homage to Japanese kung-fu movies, and the film pulls it off for the most part.

In retrospect, "Kill Bill" doesn't even require the length of the review to which I'm writing. It's a subliminal depiction of varied violence and spliced, sliced slapstick slaughtering. This is also a film that is to be dismissed by old-fart film reviewers as upstaged style superficiality. But it's not. The mystery of the film is in Tarantino's head, and it's still there, waiting impatiently to be revealed in part two. Until then, you're witness to an ultracharged ultimatum: either enjoy this plasticized picture in all its bloodied glory, or miss the quintessential theory of the movie itself: getting a kick out of it. Grade: A

MPAA: R (do not bring the kids!)

cool scenes: the showdown between the Bride and O-ren Ishi

look for: contexual anime

out there:

"Out of Time": B+

"Underworld": B-

coming up:

"Intolerable Cruelty"

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

"Runaway Jury"

"Scary Movie 3"

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