By Charles Loie

Amidst the carnage during the showdown at the House of Blue Leaves, there is a point where there is no carefully selected music from Tarantino. No scatting drums, no thumping bass from an obscure '70s gem. Instead, you hear every slice of Japanese steel as it devastates the throngs of masked yakuzas like so much sashimi. Midway through the scene, the music reenters to encounter the battle and sounds like a violent symphony. Governing the visual field, Uma Thurman stands as the Bride in full glory, swatting the blood from her samurai sword and awaiting the next hapless group’s advance. The soundtrack’s volume lowers while the viewer hears the wounded and dying moan in comical unison as the action moves into the next room. And you just sit there, lost in this world, and ask yourself, “Have I ever been this entertained?”

Kill Bill Volume 1 begins with the death of its heroine. This occurs during her wedding at the hands of her lover and boss, Bill, played by the fantastically cast David Carradine. We know her by her two aliases: the Bride, and her code name from the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad: Black Mamba. Before the last bullet is fired, she sees her former squad peering down at her --- an image she recollects before every subsequent kill in the film. Somehow, The Bride survives, only to end up in a coma for four years. But when she finally wakes, the only thing on her mind is revenge.

Moviegoers know before ever entering the theater that the bride will carry out her vengeance. The tagline for the film clearly states that “in 2003, Uma Thurman will Kill Bill.” It should read “2004,” since Volume 2 will not appear until February, but I’m sure Miramax realizes this by now. In terms of cut-and-dried plot, we are aware that every name on her list will be dispensed with before the second volume’s credits roll. We are informed of these details because we have seen movies of this sort before.

Tarantino makes little attempt to hide his appropriations: Kung Fu, Blaxsploitation, Samurai, spaghetti western, and revenge of Shakespearean proportion are all represented and consciously acknowledged. A person would have to be obsessed with each sub-genre to recognize every wink, but this film seems so familiar that anyone is able to follow along.

The feel is entirely different when combined with Tarantino’s own style. To say that one becomes actively involved in the Bride’s carnal quest for vengeance would be a grave understatement.

Tarantino has said in recent interviews that there are two universes in which his work resides. There’s the “Quentin” universe of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. In these films the action is a stylized “mirror of life” as we know it. Then there is the universe of From Dusk till Dawn, where the action can only occur in the realm of movies. This second universe would be the movies that the characters in the first universe would go to see if they were not merely celluloid themselves.

The heightened style of Kill Bill can only exist in the latter. But like the best exploitation movie, the viewer is not distanced from the goings on for the movie to fall completely into fantasy. Even when a sequence pops up in what looks like Bill Plympton-style anime, it seems perfectly reasonable without feeling out of place.
The extreme violence is completely appropriate alongside the wit of Tarantino dialogue. (Reportedly, the characteristic dialogue is even more prominent in Volume 2.) Unlike his other movie universe (of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), the excessive and theatrical use of gore makes its presence a lot less gut wrenching.

Though the singular film Kill Bill has been separated into volumes, the nonlinear organization gives the appearance of several movies. Each part maintains the style relating to the overall theme. At the House of Blue Leaves, the obvious stage-like quality of a final battle between Oren Ishii (an over-cast, and by this I mean a typecast, Lucy Liu gets some of the best lines in the film) and the Bride is completely intentional. Anyone lucky enough to catch the Shaw Brothers series at the Gene Siskel Film Center can clearly point out this backdrop’s resemblance to the one in One-Armed Swordsman. Like the aforementioned films, the inordinate amount of violence, including spurting blood and severed limbs, is at least maintained, if not elaborated upon.

Uma Thurman was Tarantino’s only choice for the role, and it is easy to see why. Her serio-comic timing is perfectly balanced with grace in the choreographed fight sequences. This use of a female as merciless protagonist references work by Zeng Peipei and other powerful yet feminine martial artists, who were kicking ass far before any warrior princess donned skimpy leather. Though Tarantino has been criticized before for his depictions of women, he certainly makes some kind of post-feminist statement by making most of the key figures female. He does this with subtlety; we are not beaten over the head with gender theory. Bill, “the man,” may be running the show, but it’s a woman who is going to take him down.

Like his brother in mutual tastes Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi trilogy), Tarantino sets out to make his own “grindhouse” movie filled with nonstop entertainment. This style is characterized by over-the-top violence and other explicitly graphic situations. A re-emergence of this trend in mainstream cinema presents something of a contradiction. On the one hand, both directors are formally accomplished; they deliver on every eye-popping level without resorting to special effects or taming the blood count. But being mainstream cinema, he cannot get away with everything. Tarantino barely slipped by with an “R” rating for Kill Bill Volume 1. It remains to be seen whether Volume 2 will emerge “NC-17” as is intended, or if Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein will buckle to the pressure of making a movie that could make more money with an “R” rating. The flavor of “grindhouse” is present here, but without the seedy daring of underground distribution.

In a year filled with many highly anticipated films, Kill Bill now stands as the pinnacle of what an entertaining movie should be. Have you ever been more entertained? Maybe, but not likely.

Photograph courtesy of Miramax Films