Kill Bill Vol. 1 - Review

Kill Bill Volume 1 - 2003

Director - Quentin Tarantino

1. Kill Bill Volume 1 Poster

Plot Summary / Review:

"Kill Bill: Volume 1" was the long awaited fourth film from Quentin Tarantino following "Pulp Fiction" (1994) and "Jackie Brown" (1997). The plot is simple when compared to his previous films but Tarantino keeps the audience interested with his trademark non-linear approach to editing. Uma Thurman stars as an assassin who has left her former life to raise a baby. The film opens with a suitably gory close up of "The Bride" after she has been beaten by her former team (the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) and her disgruntled boss, Bill.

2. The Bride

Miraculously surviving the onslaught and a bullet to the head, "The Bride" wakes from a coma four years later. Compiling a "kill list" she vows to exact revenge on Bill and his gang, hunting them down one by one. Like "Pulp Fiction" and "Resevoir Dogs", the audience are introduced to the rest of the cast through Tarantino's non-linear structure. "Dogs" and "Fiction" places plausible (if not eccentric) characters in realistic environments, paying homage to his favoured action-exploitation films. "Kill Bill" differs, "now, it seems, his interests have swung in the opposite direction, and he has immersed himself, his characters and his audience in a highly artificial world, a looking-glass universe that reflects nothing beyond his own cinematic obsessions." (Scott. 2003).

3. Death List Five

Kill Bill is a truly post modern film. "It's a martial- arts movie universe where the normal laws of economics, police work, physiology and gravity do not apply: a world composed of a brilliantly allusive tissue of spaghetti western and Asian martial-arts genres, on which the director's own, instantly identifiable presence is mounted as a superstructure." (Bradshaw. 2003). Tarantino's passion for American and Asian cinema is evident throughout, dressing his Western revenge thriller with references to Eastern cinema's most iconic films. Most notably, "The Bride's" yellow jumpsuit, a direct replica of Bruce Lee's outfit in "Game of Death".

            4. Bruce Lee - Game of Death                           5. Uma Thrman - Kill Bill Volume 1

Audience may find the clash of genres peculiar and the non-linear approach to storytelling incoherent, but none can deny it's intensity and visual splendour. Kill Bill Volume 1 is an adrenaline fuelled, hugely enjoyable movie directed by Tarantino with skill and enthusiasm."Few filmmakers have ever had the freedom and resources to make such a piece exactly as they wished, and Tarantino takes it so far that it becomes a highly idiosyncratic and deeply personal excursion into a world of movie-inspired unreality." (McCarthy. 2003).

Bibliography

Bradshaw, Peter. The Guardian 10th October 2003

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/oct/10/quentintarantino

McCarthy, Todd. Variety Review 29th September 2003.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117921975?refcatid=31

Scott, A.O. New York Times review 10th October 2003

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9804E6D7163FF933A25753C1A9659C8B63&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes

Illustrations

1. Kill Bill Vol.1 Poster http://www.impawards.com/2003/posters/kill_bill.jpg

2. The Bride http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4SfQ91dDvXI/TPOI6AAWofI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/L33Q2sK1eMg/s1600/01zx8.jpg 

3. Death List 5. http://www.flixster.com/photos/kill-bill-volume-1-death-list-5

4. Bruce Lee "Game of Death" . http://horiwood.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/bruceleeyellow.jpg

5. Uma Thurman "Kill Bill Volume 1".  http://whysoblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kill-bill-uma-thurman-whysoblu.jpg