![]() ![]() We see a brutal suburban confrontation with Vernita, as well as an extended Okinawa sequence with master Samurai sword craftsman Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba). In Volume 1, we witness only the first half of her furious quest, and, in typical Tarantino style, it's imparted in fragments and flashbacks and flashforwards. Fox), Budd (Michael Madsen), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), and the eponymous Bill (David Carradine). ![]() After waking from a coma and regathering her strength, the Bride embarks on what the movie advertisements call a roaring rampage of revenge, in which she will exact her fury on her former partners-O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green (Vivica A. Somewhat archly, and even awkwardly, it follows the story of the blood-spattered Bride (Uma Thurman), who was left for dead, four years earlier in an El Paso chapel, by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, of which she was once a member. ![]() You can practically see his look of glee behind the camera.Īn idea that has its roots way back on the set of Pulp Fiction (when Tarantino would whisper to Mia Wallace, "Uma Thurman is gonna kill Bill"), Kill Bill is an unlikely success. ![]() If Kill Bill isn't necessarily Tarantino at the top of his game, it is surely Tarantino having a kick-ass good time. The film is a marvel of outrageous violence and black humor, and of clumsy and pretentious dialog that somehow works. Kill Bill Volume 1 is a big ol' blast of style, curiously empty in the middle, but damn if it isn't one of the coolest movies you're likely to see. Devouring prerelease gossip and teaser trailers, I prepared myself for a heavy dose of uber-Tarantino-a splashy, somewhat insane pastiche of genre clichés and oversaturated panache-and oh, did I get it. It was with great giddiness that I welcomed Quentin Tarantino back to a theater near me, back in October 2003. But then the forgiving part of me steps in and admits that even as a singular film, Kill Bill Volume 1 is a hell of a fun, frothy ride-and it's worth owning in the interim. The cynical part of me would decry the move as a blatant cash grab and call this double-punch of DVD/movie release just more of the same. I might think back to the decidedly odd decision to split Kill Bill into two parts in the first place. Should you bother picking up what amounts to a barebones DVD release of half a movie? Will we even see a standalone version of Volume 2? Or will the inevitable comprehensive set eclipse any potential standalone Volume 2 disc? If that's the case, won't this standalone Volume 1 disc look awfully silly and pointless next to that set? These are questions I'd be considering if I didn't have this review copy in hand. Surely, we're destined to see a comprehensive DVD set of the entire epic at some later date, perhaps even before Christmas of this year. You might rightfully wonder about the future of Kill Bill on DVD. However, despite the timeliness and convenience of the Kill Bill film/DVD release schedule, you might pause before buying this DVD of Volume 1. Arriving days before Tarantino's Kill Bill vision will be completed in the highly anticipated Volume 2, this DVD of Volume 1 comes at a perfect time for us to finally appreciate this crazy revenge epic in its full, intended scope. Dubbed self-importantly "the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino" (and, somewhat confusingly, Volume 2 will be labeled "the fifth film"), Kill Bill Volume 1 is a wild, allusion-crammed cartoon of a movie, filled with gore and smirks-but it really is only half a film. So here we have it-the first part of Quentin Tarantino's wiz-bang, blood-drenched, over-the-top Hong Kong samurai homage, Kill Bill Volume 1. ![]()
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