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KILL BILL : VOL. 1
7/10
USA 2003
: Quentin TARANTINO : 110 mins (93 – 113 mins variously reported as
running times)
 We’re
always being told by Harvey Weinstein that Miramax is ‘the House that
Quentin Built’, and whatever Quentin wants to do in that house is fine
by him. Well, after a tentative venture downstairs to join the scary grown-ups
with 1997’s Jackie Brown, he’s now retreated into the safer environs
of his bedroom-universe with Kill Bill : not since the heyday of
king-conman Stanley Kubrick have we seen a more spectacular case of a
nervy studio indulging a ‘genius’ director to such grotesquely profligate
lengths.
And
there’s an especially troubling back-story behind the movie’s protracted
production period – most of the filming took place in China, allowing
the director to, in his own words, film the “Chinese way” with more ‘flexible’
crews. In other words, the famously anti-union Tarantino was able to finally
get far away from those pesky Hollywood practices, hire cut-rate labour
and employ them for stretches of time that would be unimaginable back
home in the USA.
Pompously
heralded on screen and poster alike as ‘the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino,
it’s most definitely the least of the quartet – though three-and-a-half
would be a more accurate tally: Kill Bill Volume One being, of
course, only 50% percent of the finished movie which will presumably clock
in at somewhere in excess of 200 minutes. This sprawl, and that six-year
gap since Jackie Brown, are ironic indeed, considering the fact
that Kill Bill is explicitly a tribute to (or more accurately a
pastiche of) kung-fu movies: a genre which has always tended towards the
conveyorbelt principle of relatively short films, churned out with daunting
speed: it’s an honourable principle to which Takashi Miike is perhaps
the last great adherent.
After
watching a Miike classic like Ichi
The Killer, the ‘megaviolence’ in Kill Bill seems like
rather thin soup indeed, gently pasteurised for squeamish US multiplex
audiences: in the climactic bloodbath, Tarantino bafflingly switches to
monochrome. Earlier, during an especially gruesome moment, he simply cuts
away to black as if shielding our eyes from the horror (just as in Reservoir
Dogs his camera went on that little walk while the cop’s ear was being
sliced off). Why? There’s not much sense asking ‘why’ with Tarantino,
we aren’t just entering a movie-theatre when we see one of his movies,
we’re entering his head. And, on this evidence, that simply isn’t as interesting
a place to be as it once was.
The
plot this time is ostentatiously slight: a nameless female assassin (Uma
Thurman, sharp with sword, dull with dialogue) tracks down her former
colleagues (Lucy Liu, Vernita Fox, etc) in the ‘Deadly Vipers Assassination
Squad’ who, on the orders of enigmatic boss Bill (David Carradine, heard
but never seen) gatecrashed her wedding with bloody results. Four years
later our heroine wakes from a coma and sets off on a quest for vengeance
that’s no less gore-splattered than her nuptials, presented in a series
of time-hopping chapters. There’s no end of padding along the way which
could and should have been excised, allowing the whole project to occupy
an economic two-hour span. Instead, Tarantino doesn’t seem to know when
to say cut – and Weinstein would rather trust his wunderkind’s judgement
than take his usual route of wading in with the scissors himself.
The
result has enough touches of wit and brilliance to make it just about
a worthwhile, even if the film all too often detours off into the tempting
dead-ends of the asinine immaturity. Kill Bill is entertaining
and often fun – but it’s a real shame that a terrific talent like Quentin
Tarantino should waste his time on what is, fundamentally, a B-movie bloated
and hyped out of all proportion.
by Neil
Young
14th
October, 2003
(seen 2nd October, UCG Sheffield – CinemaDays)
for mini review,
click here, for the thoughts after a second
viewing click here and here for long
(long version coming soon)
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