KILL BILL: VOLUME ONE
I wish Go Go made it through. I knew she wouldn't; I knew even
though she was swinging that mace on a chain like a champ and cleaning
Uma Thurman's clock - I knew she wasn't going to make it. I knew
she was evil, insane. I knew from her profile she was no where near
as pretty as she seemed head on. Still. I'll always remember Go
Go. I liked her the best. Even more than Uma, and I liked her a
whole lotta lot.
Long before I bought my ticket to see Kill Bill: Volume One
I knew the critics had already seen it and made their heady and
breathless declarations. "The Most Violent Movie Ever Made!"
"The Movie Quentin Tarantino Fans Have Been Waiting For!"
There's no point playing that game. There's no point trying to neatly
package my multitude of reactions to Kill Bill in a easily
digestible quote or sound byte, 'specially since no one is quoting
me anyway (and thank the Lord for that.)
What is there to say? Where to even start with the praise?
How about at the beginning? Right when the picture started I could
hear the hampsters running in the circles of the minds of the film
students present in the theater. I could feel them already searching
for ways they can steal from what they're seeing. I'm already shuddering
at the number of stylistic rips underway.
But isn't that what Quentin did? Didn't he just shamelessly steal
from a bunch of other movies (kung fu, grind house, westerns, etc.
as the critics have already pointed out with the help of their press
releases)? Yes.
But you know what else Quentin did? He took all these aspects of
all the various forms of cinema that he loves, he took them and
then he - wait for it! - he made them his own. Whoa. How'd that
go again? He made them his own. He fused his personality,
his exuberance, his humor, and his style with his love of movies
and what we got is Kill Bill, a motion picture experience
a lot like movies many of us have seen before, but unique in it's
own way. Uniquely Quentin. (I don't know the man - only saw him
on the street once - but I hope he doesn't mind me calling him by
his first name. He seems like he wouldn't.)
Quentin had me right from the get go. "Revenge is a dish best
served cold" - Old Klingon Proverb. I was sold. (I'm a Trekkie,
but that's my cross to bear, not yours.) The movie unfolded with that awesome confidence Quentin has, that
confidence that he knows what he's doing and he's sharing what he
knows with the way a magician wows us with tricks, and it's so much
fun because we don't know what he'll do next. The broad daylight
fight with Vivica A. Fox in her house. The unexpected gunshot from
the cereal box. How Uma, no stranger to the burning need for vengeance,
let Vivica's daughter know she would be welcome to come calling
if she so felt the urge. And then from there, the bloody door-meets-head
revenge sequence in the hospital, Uma in the Pussy Wagon willing
her legs back to life, Lucy Liu's fantastic anime origin, Sonny
Chiba the swordmaker in Okinawa not being what he first appeared
to be, and then the bravura showdown in Tokyo with Lucy Liu and
her endless rain of assassins, and all that blood. Oh, and that
tip of the hat to Connor MacLeod vs. The Kurgan in Highlander
really made me smile.
In a way, I felt bad for Lucy Liu. She is the boss of bosses, the
woman who rules all crime in Tokyo. We see her enter the House of
Blue Leaves at the height of her power. Surrounded by her bodyguards
and lieutenants, she is untouchable, invincible. She doesn't know
the woman in the yellow biker leather at the bar is here to bring
it all to a blood-soaked end, her empire and then her life, in that
order. How did Lucy Liu feel as she watched her inner circle be
literally cut down by Uma's katana in pieces one by one? Did she
turn her back and leave the room because she couldn't face what
she was seeing? She knew then that she made a mistake four years
ago, and isn't it always the way that it's the little mistakes that
come back to ruin you when you least expect it? She got what she
deserved, but still, she lost it all so quickly. Made me kind of
sad for a minute. Maybe the snowfall and the night scenery and the
music during that final swordfight with Uma had something to do
with it too.
It's easier to review the audience than it is to review Kill
Bill, and I'm not one to shy away from something easy, so here
goes: You film school fucks (you know who you are) don't know what
the fuck you're talking about. You sleep through the classes your
parents paid for and put in your four years of self-indulgent mediocrity,
after which the lucky among you will have the glamorous job of guarding
the catering on someone else's self-indulgent, mediocre independent
film, and you have the gall to barf up derogatory appraisals of
something like Kill Bill? If you ever met Quentin Tarantino,
you'd be on the floor licking his balls. The rest of you, the ones
who thought the movie "kicked ass", you're on the right
track. I'm with you fellas.
Best movie ever? No. But it's pretty fucking great for what it
is. And there's a whole second half to go. There's still Bill to
kill.
Go Go. Come back, Go Go. We hardly knew you.
- John Orquiola (reviewed 8/03)
As for Kill
Bill: Volume Two, I'd have liked it a lot more if
Bill had managed to shut the fuck up for five minutes.
Bill: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Shut up!
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