Kill Bill: Volume 1

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. «That woman deserves her revenge. And we deserve to die. » Back in the fall of 2003, just a few days before Kill Bill came out I told a friend I wasnt really into martial arts films. He asked me why I wanted to see it in that case, and I answered that I knew it would be more than that. It was. Kill Bill, volume 1 is Quentin Tarantino's fourth film in a bit over a decade and it was his first film in six years. It is filled with dozens of references of movies Akira Kurosawa's, the Shaw Brothers's and more. The plot is quite simple, a pregnant woman is murdered by her former partners, they leave her for dead but she is only in a coma. They know she survived but they didnt expect her to wake up four years later and go on a vengeance streak, killing them all one by one. She has five names on her list, but in Volume One she only takes care of two of them and sets the table for the next film. Tarantino goes back to his roots, telling his story in chronological disorder - I know it's not the way it should be said but I like it like that - just like in Pulp Fiction. There are five chapters going back and forth through time. In the first chapter she kills the second person on her list, then we go back to when she woke up from her coma. She meets a man in Okinawa, Hattori Hanzô, with Sonny Chiba reprising his role from the 1980 TV series Hattori Hanzô: Kage no Gundan. He builds her a sword that she'll use to fight O-Ren Ishii, a half-Japenese, half-Chinesese American. She is the head of the new Japenese mafia, thats not important for the plot, but we see her rise and how she became a bloddy murderer though a very cool animated sequence looking like the best anime out there. Kill Bill is bloody, its graphic, but it doesnt take itself seriously and all that blood is meant to be funny, even though it can still be shocking. The fight against the Crazy 88 is particularly bloody, and devilishly entertaining. Quentin Tarantino always has humor in his film, and this one is no exception. Its extremely stylish, never realistic, but thats the point and the man behind Reservoir Dogs is surprisingly very good and effective at shooting action sequences. There are lots of old pop songs that no one remembered, a cool soundtrack, sometimes echoing the work of Ennio Morricone. It mixes many genres, it doesnt it very well, despite a very thin plot, which is the point in a way, we all know its going to get more elaborate in the following film. What is left after all that? Well, it sure doesnt look like anything else than a Quentin Tarantino flick. He is talented, that motherf*cker. A hell of a good time at the movies.