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I've learned so many great things
from Quentin Tarantino movies. For example, if you cut off
a man's little finger, he'll tell you if he wears lady's underwear
(Reservoir Dogs). In France, they call a quarter-pounder with
cheese a "Royal with Cheese"(Pulp Fiction). And
when you absolutely, positively have to kill everyone in the
room, use an AK-47 (Jackie Brown). For good or for bad, good
ol‚ Quentin has permanently changed the landscape of
American popular cinema, and in the weeks and days leading
up to Kill Bill, I was hopping with glee with anticipation
for this film. What would Mr. Tarantino teach us next?
Umm... don't rape women in comas? This is the key piece of
proper ettiquitte that I learned by watching "Kill Bill:
Vol. 1", the new balletic grindcore chopsocky, chop-em-up
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Raping comatose
girls who've been in a vegetative state for four-and-a-half
years, even if they're played by the lithe Uma Thurman, is
wrong.
Uma, as we discover in the beginning of Kill Bill: Vol. 1
has been put into said coma on her wedding day by, well, Bill.
Bill is played by David Carradine, or at least by his hands
and feet. I'm guessing that we'll see his face in Volume 2.
She wakes up from the coma four years later, and after proving
to the coma rapist that she was not, in fact, raised in a
barn (you'll get it if you've seen the film), she embarks
on a quest to kill Bill-- and anyone else who stands in her
way. This includes Bill's henchmen, played by Vivica A. Fox,
Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah, playing Copperhead,
Cottonmouth, Sidewinder and California Mountain Snake, respectively.
That Mr. Tarantino can sure think of clever character names,
which is funny because we never learn the name of Uma's character.
He's got to be clever, though, considering that what I've
just told you is the sum total of the plot.
The former Mrs. Hawke goes into a coma, is rogered repeatedly,
wakes up, gives swift justice to her attacker (you just can't
find good health care workers today), and sets out to kill
Bill and his henchmen. Compared to the Byzantine plot structure
of Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill is about as complicated as George
W. Bush's foreign policy. I have to say that I was a little
disappointed by this; part of the fun of Tarantino's 1994
post-modern masterpiece was trying to figure out what the
hell was going on (I'm still not certain what was in that
briefcase). Hell, Kill Bill barely has any of Tarantino's
trademark dialogue. Whereas Pulp Fiction was chock full of
memorable lines ("I'm a fire breathing motherfucker,
motherfucker,‰ being one of my favorites), Kill Bill
barely had any dialogue that wasn't translated into Japanese
and back again. I doubt that "I apologize for questioning
your ownership of the sword‰ will be quoted around water
coolers this year.
I don't want to come across like I didn't enjoy this movie,
because that's not the case. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was, umm, how
should I put this? Oh, yeah. SO FUCKING COOL! It was about
the coolest fucking movie that I've fucking seen in a fucking
long time. It was SO COOL. Dear God was it cool. The plot
was simplistic? Who cares! Stilted dialogue? So fucking what!
The economy sucks, George Bush is destroying this nation,
and a small cyst just developed on my left testicle that is
able to sing "God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen" in three-part
harmony? None of that fucking matters, because Kill Bill:
Vol. 2 is going to be released this February, and then all
will be right in this world.
How cool is Kill Bill? How much time do you have? How much
space do I have left in this review? Kill Bill is so cool
it keeps meat from going bad for up to six months. It's so
cool George Bush is using it as proof that there's no global
warming. It's so cool that I've run out of ways to describe
how cool it is. Kill Bill is not only too cool for words;
it's also too cool for metaphors.
For me to accurately describe how cool Kill Bill was, I'd
have to give away all the good parts. Like the time that--oh
wait, I can't tell you that. Or, that other time-- no, you
should really see that for yourself. And then there was the
bit when Uma took her katana and chopped off a guy's-- no,
I can't give anymore away.
Remember in "The Matrix: Reloaded" when a computer-generated
Keanu fought a few hundred computer-generated Mr. Smiths?
Remember feeling underwhelmed by that scene? Like you felt
you should have been impressed, because so much work went
into animating that scene, but at the end of the day all you
were doing was watching a cartoon? Well, there's a similar
scene in Kill Bill. Uma doesn't fight hundreds of the same
guy, but she might as well, because they're all wearing identical
suits and Kato masks. But, it's really Uma doing all those
stunts. It's really Uma weilding that katana. It's really
Uma doing a breakdancing back-spin as she chops off henchmen's
body parts left and right. Quentin decreed that there were
to be no computer effects in this film. It shows. But it also
was the right choice. I had forgotten how exhilarating it
was to really wonder how the hell they did that; as opposed
to wondering how many computer terminals they had rendering
code. (George Lucas, I'm looking at you.)
It just seemed that while Quentin didn't spend too much time
on the script, he just had so much fun making this movie.
And it shows in so many ways. From the tacky old-school "Feature
Presentation" graphic that preceded the movie, to the
fact that Uma flies over Japan in an airplane, it's very easy
to see the strings. No one can shoot a bunch of people walking
down a hallway in slow-motion like Quentin can. The word on
the street is that the reason why the film has been split
into two parts is because Quentin (I feel like I'm on a first-name
basis with him now) couldn't stop writing scenes for it. That
part of the movie, however, doesn't seem to work as well as
it could. The film doesn't have a real ending, it just kind
of stops.
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Above:
Cast of "Kill Bill Vol. 1". Below: Quentin demonstrates
what lots of fame plus money minus good looks can buy you.
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