Film Reviews

Kill Bill: Volume 1

• Rating:
• Director: Quentin Tarantino.
• Starring: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kuriyama, Julie Dreyfus, Gordon Liu.
• Details: US / 101 mins / (18).

No film can hope to negotiate the hype that Quentin Tarantino's fourth feature proper has been subjected to ('The Matrix Reloaded' that means you) but that it almost does says more about 'Kill Bill' than a thousand words. Breathtaking in its execution, 'Kill Bill' may not mark the emergence of the self-proclaimed enfant terrible as a director to rank alongside his idols (just yet) but this is a splendid, thrilling and extraordinarily visceral slice of pulp fiction (pun intended). Sporting a yellow tracksuit that Bruce Lee would be envious of, Uma Thurman plays the Bride, a female assassin who is targeted for murder by her own associates, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. The hit isn't quite successful and the Bride ends up in a coma for some five years before she re-emerges with only vengeance on her mind. After she whacks the first name on her list, the Bride heads to the Orient to exact her revenge on the others and eventually accomplish her titular goal - to kill Bill (Carradine). Although the plot is as thin as a catwalk model and twice as flimsy, Tarantino's main purpose with 'Kill Bill' appears to be simple - to have as much fun as is humanly possible. It seems that he's been making 'Kill Bill' in his head for years, for the execution of the action set pieces is so outlandish and imaginative that only an immensely talented director, who has honed an idea over a very long time, would even attempt. Indeed, one of the primary functions of the battle sequences seems to be outdoing its immediate predecessor and are executed with such wit, style and imagination that repetition never really becomes an issue. So just how good is Tarantino? On this evidence, he's a wildly inventive, sometimes visionary filmmaker albeit one who doesn't have an awful lot to really say for himself. But then again, few directors say nothing at all as well as this.

Review by Garreth Murphy