Tarantino Kills Bill with Style
By Tim Anderegg
A&F Associate

Ok, so Bill doesn’t get killed just yet in this installment, but Kill Bill Vol. 1 reminds one every second what the movie is all about: vengeance, with style. With an opening announcement of “Now, The Feature Presentation” in 1970’s style and the quote “Vengeance is a dish best served cold,” attributed to an ancient Klingon proverb, you get the hint.

While lacking the witty dialogue of Pulp Fiction and the subtle coolness of Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Tarantino’s fourth movie, is a great movie for entirely different reasons. It’s just gory, hilarious, over-the-top fun that manages to pay tribute at once to Kurosawa-style samurai movies, Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, and Japanese anime, without skipping a beat or seeming the slightest bit pretentious.

Even though the plot is simple and relatively unimportant (it is summarized in the two word title) it still manages to seem unique and interesting. To flesh it out a bit, Uma Thurman is’“The Bride,” a character she and Tarantino created during the filming of”Pulp Fiction, who was shot in the head by her former boss, Bill, and instead of dying fell into a four-year coma. Upon waking, she can think of only one thing: killing Bill and the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (how’s that for a name?) who helped him slaughter her husband, unborn child, and all of her wedding guests.

Typically Tarantino, the movie is not in chronological order, which helps make the simple plot seem more complex. Thurman’s journey takes her from suburban California, to Okinawa, Japan, at the end of the plot but the beginning of the movie; and finally Tokyo, where she engages in a showdown at the House of Blue Leaves with O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu).

Sure, this movie is ridiculously violent and gory, but it manages to be less disturbing than the violence in, for instance, Bad Boys 2, which seems excessive because it is quite graphic for a comedy. Kill Bill’s violence, on the other hand, seems purely entertaining and fun because of the unrealistic, ridiculous way it is portrayed. A scene at the House of Blue Leaves involves Thurman fighting off the Crazy 88, Liu’s personal army, hacking them to pieces with her samurai sword, but due to Tarantino’s style, it is hilarious rather than sickening. He switches to black and white film just at the point where the gore is about to get too much, and the blood spouting out of hacked off limbs in excessive quantities intentionally looks like the fake blood it is.

Embracing further fakeness, Tarantino’s desire to use no computer special effects whatsoever results in a movie more cool and stylish looking than movies such as The Matrix and the new Star Wars episodes, and arguably more authentic looking too. There’s no blue screen wizardry or fancy blood effects; instead, Tarantino relies on the tried-and-true techniques of the movies he grew up with. Invisible wire enables super human jumps and kung fu moves, and condoms full of blood do the trick during sword fights.

In the realm of music, of course, Tarantino’s soundtrack rocks. All of the original music was recorded by RZA, a member of the Wu Tang Clan, who also happens to be an avid Samurai enthusiast, and his selection of old tunes is, as usual, cool, including tunes by Nancy Sinatra and Issac Hayes that are put to good use.

While I may be a hard-core Tarantino fan, which could bias my opinion a bit, I think Kill Bill is a movie that anyone who truly loves films cannot help but love. That’s one of the things I like best about Tarantino: more than the typical director, he loves the art form of film making, and Kill Bill is definitely a tribute to that art. Tarantino’s movies remind one why going to the movies can be so much more rewarding than just watching a movie on TV. As much as the upcoming new’Lord of the Rings and Matrix movies, I cannot wait for Kill Bill: Volume 2 to come to theaters.