Gunned down on her wedding day by her former colleagues, an assassin (Thurman) wakes from a coma four years later intent on revenge. She makes a 'death list': number five is Bill, but first there are some old workmates to see...
Publicised as Quentin Tarantino's 4th film (always a bad sign when the director overshadows the actors!), 'Kill Bill' is Tarantino's homage to the Eastern Martial Arts films. Various Martial Arts references are scattered throughout, from 'The Bride' in her black and yellow biker outfit (which is a tribute to Bruce Lee in his final film), to appearances by Sonny Chiba and David Carradine.
First off the basic premise - 'The Bride' (Uma Thurman) is a member of a group of highly paid assassins, each codenamed after a snake (her's being Black Mamba, but there are also Copperhead, Cottonmouth etc - you get the idea). When she decides to leave the group to get married the rest of the team decided to crash the ceremony and kill everyone (as you do). Luckily for her (or this film would have been 5 minutes long instead of the 5 hours its going to be) 'The Bride' survives but is ends up in a coma. True to the tradition of movie baddies (see the original 'Austin Powers' movie for the best explanation of the reasoning behind this), Bill decides not to kill her off while she's in this helpless state, but instead leaves her in the hope that she wont wake up wanting revenge on them all. Surprise, surprise - she wakes up wanting revenge on them all (well you would wouldn't you?) and sets about hunting down each of her ex-partners in turn, with Bill being last on her list (hence the name of the film!).
Ok that's about as much of the story as you really need and it's summed up in the first 5 minutes of the film anyway so I'm not spoiling anything.
Anyone who's seen the other 3 Tarantino directed films (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown) will know his style by now - just take any action film and cut it up, then rearrange the bits into any order you like. Always making sure you have the end of the film at the beginning and the start at the end and ta da - you have a Tarantino style film!
Kill Bill is no different - its just longer. A lot longer! That's why they had to split it into two films in the end (Volume 1 already released, Volume 2 early next year). The first film only covers 'The Bride's revenge on two of the group (20 minutes for the first fight, well over an hour for the second!).
The fight sequences are amazingly well choreographed, especially the ones involving Lucy Liu (Charlie's Angels) and Chiaki Kuriyama (Battle Royale), and you can easily see why it too so long to make. When I saw this I expected a similar blood and gore fest as the previous Tarantino films (Reservoir Dogs being the best example), but that's not what you get. Instead you get a parody of the Martial Arts films, with fight sequences that reminded me more of the Black Knight from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' ('tis but a scratch!). Every loss of limb is accompanied by an unrealistic fountain of blood.
If you're a Tarantino Fan, go and watch this (that was its main selling point after all), but if you want to watch it just to see what all the hype is about, you're better off waiting until both it and volume two comes out on DVD (no doubt in a nice little box set with all the missing scenes that he had to cut out to get it down to a more acceptable 5 hours!). At least then you'll be able to flick backwards and forwards through it so the film makes some sense.
Vernita Green and O-Ren Ishii are down, but for the Bride (Thurman), there's still three to go - Budd (Madsen), the murderous one-eye Elle Driver (Hannah), and the big bad voodoo daddy of them all, Bill (Carradine)...
The Bride is back! By the end of Vol 1 she'd already dispatched 2 of her former colleagues in long, long blood drenched fight sequences and was well on her way to hunting down her former employer, and lover, Bill. This is where the second volume picks up the story - with the final 2 assassins in her sights, the Bride continues her search for Bill and get her revenge at last.
Given the tag line on many of the posters for this film ('The Rampage Continues'), you'd be forgiven for expecting the same tempo of action as the first film. But anyone expecting this is going to be sorely disappointed. It's as if Quentin Tarantino used up his special effect budget (and is supply of fake blood) in the first 2 fight sequences that formed the bulk of Volume 1. This latest film contains all the story that was missing from its predecessor, and very little action to balance it out (and virtually no blood!).
The flashback section in the middle where the Bride is first trained to be an assassin could have been a lot longer and would have added a lot more to the film than the long and dawn out conversations towards the end of the film do.
The Vol 1/Vol 2 combination suffers in the same way that the Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions did. The first has all the action, whilst the second has all the story. In my opinion, a good film should be able to balance these two halves out effectively.
Hopefully there's the intention to release a combined Kill Bill DVD in the near future (and considering there are no extras on the Vol 1 DVD it could be a safe bet). With both volumes re-edited so that they fit together more smoothly than they currently do at separate films.
Overall a very disappointing follow up. I wasn't particularly impressed with Volume 1 when I first saw it, but compared to this one, it's a masterpiece!
Review by Paul
