Kill Bill Vol. 1 (***)
review by Jon Waterman

A bride is shot on her wedding day. It had been planned long before this moment. A group of highly skilled assassins left the newly married assassin for dead. However, no one made sure. Now she’s out for revenge and looking to get rid of everyone that tried to get rid of her. Ultimately, her goal is to find the man that shot her in the head. She wants to…Kill Bill.

Two things stand out more than anything else in this film. First is the wide variety of visual techniques. Second is the overabundance of blood and all the violence that comes along with it. Let’s get right into it.

Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino provides an array of styles to create an interesting, yet confusing tapestry of homages. Included are sequences in black and white, silhouette and animated. Of course, there are also flashbacks. Maybe I’m admitting I’m dumb, but I didn’t understand why the switch over was necessary. They all looked amazing, but other than that, motivation behind bringing in a new style wasn’t as clear. Did he think we were going to get bored? Was it to cover some expenses? Was it just to acknowledge more influences? I don’t know.

The main look of the film is a bright and vibrant one full of rich, solid colors and detail shown virtually everywhere on the screen. Very rarely, if at all did I see a pure black. Even the back corners in shadows showed detail. On the other hand, though, nearly every shot made a point to include a blown out white spot or light. Overexposing and allowing hot spots to show seems to be a growing trend these days. It’s more of a subtle maneuver here, but still noticeable.

The fight scenes worked well. The action was clear-cut (no pun intended) and the action never lingered. It was sensationalistic and over-the-top, but that’s the appeal of it. Most action sequences take themselves too seriously. This is marketed as a martial arts revenge picture. One has to expect to see unrealistic fights. This one happened to include a throw back to the days of cheesy blood effects and produced gallons and gallons of it. Fake limbs and fun abound. Something else I found interesting about the fight scenes is that occasionally they would play out without the use of music. This very well could be another reference to this genre, but I liked how the intensity of it played out when there was no beat to guide the audience.

The story is very simplistic and all I can really say is that I hope it gets more fleshed out in the second episode. There’s really nothing to hold onto besides watching her go from fight to fight. Also, the acting is not as good all the time. There’s a scene in the beginning between Uma Thurman and Vivica A. Fox that was just absolutely painful. I’m sure one could argue this is a style choice, too, but it was only ear-coveringly bad during this one scene in the kitchen.

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