Kill Bill Vol. 1: Movie, DVD Review

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, 93 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2003)

Read the review of Kill Bill Vol. 2 here.

In "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," Quentin Tarantino comes out swinging with the sort of restless, overcharged ferocity that, when properly channeled, tends to send you back in your seat - way back in your seat - straight to its springs.

This kinetic, outrageous movie, the second half of which will be released this Friday in theaters, finds the director on a tear, quite literally, chopping off more heads and severing more limbs than a slaughterhouse.

Is there a point to the violence? Absolutely. "Kill Bill" is a celebration of '70s grindhouse cinema. It was made in tribute to the director's favorite genres - blaxploitation, the spaghetti western, Japanese anime and Yazuka, and the sort of Chinese martial arts films that Jackie Chan made in his youth.

Armed with his encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and a terrifically cast Uma Thurman as his leading lady, Tarantino begins his movie with an unflinching black-and-white close-up of Thurman's smashed-in face. Her character, Black Mamba, also known as the Bride, is lying on her back on the floor of a blood-splattered chapel in the middle of a southwestern nowhere. She's decked out in a ruined wedding dress, she's about eight months pregnant, and she's surrounded by a heap of dead bodies, all of whom - including the unidentified groom - fell victim to the massacre that just took place around her.

Leaning over her is Bill (David Carradine, though we never see his face), a mysterious bloke who puts a bullet through the Bride's head the moment she finds the courage (or is it the rage?) to tell him that the baby she's carrying is his.

What spins from this ugliness is hardly linear - Tarantino fragments time, dicing it as if by Ginsu knife. Still, the gist of what unfolds goes like this: Four years pass, the Bride awakens from her coma and makes a list of the people who must die for doing her and her dead baby wrong.

Now an avenging angel with revenge eating at her heart, the Bride seeks out all of these evildoers, with Tarantino dividing the ensuing confrontations into chapters, each of which employs a different style of genre fighting. What ensues is a fantastic postfeminist display of showmanship from a director actively encouraging style over substance.

When one gives in to such an impulse, there's always a risk the movie will suffer an emotional death, but "Kill Bill" doesn't. Taking a cue from silent films, Tarantino leans hard on his cast, particularly Thurman, to rough out the emotional corners of his story by focusing on their physical response to their internal conflict. The result is pure pop art.

Grade: A