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Dan Owen reviews

Distributed by
Miramax Home Entertainment

Cert: R

Cat.no: 32210

Running time: 111 minutes

Year: 2003

Pressing: 2004

Region(s): 2, PAL

Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1

Languages: English, French

Subtitles: English, French

Widescreen: 2.35:1

16:9-Enhanced: Yes

Macrovision: Yes

Disc Format: DVD 9

Price: £14.99

Extras: 'The Making Of Kill Bill' featurette, Quentin Tarantino movie trailers, 2 'The 5,6,7,8's' music videos.

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Director:

Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown)

Producers:

Lawrence Bender, Koko Maeda, Dede Nickerson, Kwame Parker, Erica Steinberg, E. Bennett Walsh, Bob Weinstein & Harvey Weinstein

Screenplay:

Quentin Tarantino (Based on the character 'The Bride', created by Quentin Tarantino & Uma Thurman)

Music:

Takeshi Kobayashi ("Wound That Heals") The RZA & D.A. Young ("Armundo")

Cinematographer:

Robert Richardson

Cast:

The Bride: Uma Thurman
Elle Driver: Daryl Hannah
Vernita Green: Vivica A. Fox
Bill: David Carradine
O-Ren Ishii: Lucy Liu
Hattori Hanzo: Sonny Chiba
Go-Go Yubari: Chiaki Kuriyama
Budd: Michael Madsen
Earl McGraw: Michael Parks

This is the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino, - well, better late than never.

Tarantino, the undoubted king of independent cinema throughout the '90s, thanks to heist thriller Reservoir Dogs and gangster epic Pulp Fiction, was in serious danger of having his crown reclaimed after apparently going A.W.O.L after the release of 1997's Jackie Brown. But now, five years later, Tarantino has finally returned, blasting onto cinema screens with Kill Bill Volume I, a vengeance-fuelled kung-fu epic.

Kill Bill Volume I continues the tradition of Tarantino's love affair with '70s exploitation movies - this time focusing on the oriental passion for high-octane martial arts slug-fests.

Uma Thurman stars as "The Bride", a pregnant member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS), whose fellow assassins rudely gatecrash her wedding, slaughter the congregation and leave her for dead. Years later, The Bride awakens from a coma and vows to avenge her marital bloodbath by systematically murdering her ex-colleagues one-by-one... until she comes face-to-face with their leader, and ex-lover, the titular Bill (Carradine).

It's a plot that has been trodden hundreds of times before in movies, particularly in the two genres Tarantino affectionately pays homage to throughout this opus - Asian chop-socky and spaghetti westerns. As always with Tarantino, the great pleasure in his work is how he manages to take age-old plots and outdated styles and make them work for contemporary audiences. Kill Bill Volume I is a cinematic adrenaline rush of crash-zooms, snappy edits, poetic slow-motion, eclectic music, eye-popping gore and violent Japanese animation.

Uma Thurman plays the nameless female assassin with great composure, managing to endow a fairly one-dimensional character with emotional conviction and physical dexterity. The other characters, in Volume I anyway, almost become window dressing, but all are engagingly drawn paradigms of evildoers: from Daryl Hannah's eye-patched bitch, Vivica A. Fox's spunky hard-ass, to Lucy Liu's icy crime Queen of Tokyo. Other characters linger in the darkness, glimpsed only in flashbacks - so judgment should be reserved for Michael Madsen's Budd and David Carradine's Bill until Volume II rolls into town...

Taken as a single entity, Volume I is merely an appetiser for what will hopefully be a glorious main course. The infamous eleventh hour decision to chop the movie in two seems well judged, because Volume I manages not to outstay its welcome and satisfy audiences without becoming monotonous due to its intrinsically simplistic "find and destroy" ethic. For all its entertaining vibrancy, I doubt Kill Bill would work quite as well as four hour odyssey.

So, in one-finger salute to cynics, Kill Bill Volume I is a resounding success, and should appeal to its target audience of young males and perhaps draw in the clued-up older crowd who remember the 70's source material Tarantino draws from and revamps for today's MTV-generation.

As a director, Tarantino is clearly flexing his muscles with great bravado throughout, managing to create some of the freshest fight sequences in recent memory (stomping all over The Matrix's computer enhancements with convincing stunts and old-fashioned camera prowess.) The only real complaint is the lack of Tarantino's trademark dialogue - expected to return in Volume II, high-kicking into cinemas at the time this review went online...

The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen picture is crystal clear and sumptuous to behold - with no real flaws to speak of. A glorious example of what a professionally sampled DVD can achieve. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is also impressive, with great range and handling of the sonic effects (check out Go-Go's ball and chain), plus a general ease with Tarantino's musical tracks peppered throughout the film.

Sadly, in the extra features department, Kill Bill Volume I is a very disappointing disc from 'Miramax', undoubtedly to be improved upon within the year. The DVD only gives us one extra feature to speak of - 'The Making Of Kill Bill'. This is a frustratingly short featurette, but manages to pack quite a lot of detail and interesting sound bites from all concerned - particularly Tarantino himself, who can always be relied upon to spin a good movie-making yarn. The eagle-eyed should also have fun spotting footage that obviously comes from Volume II.

Elsewhere on the disc, there are two music videos featuring "The 5,6,7,8's", the band who featured in The House Of Blue Leaves chapter of the movie, and trailers for every Tarantino film (including a Kill Bill Volume II teaser.)

And that's basically your lot. The menu screens are nicely designed, of course, but the lack of material on the disc is a big disappointment - particularly as Tarantino swore the DVD would be packed with goodies. Of course, a 'Special Edition' disc or "twin pack" of both movies will probably appear before the end of 2004, so aficionados may be best off renting Volume I and only buying when a more comprehensive disc is released.

Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2004.

The following is a list of all the Quentin Tarantino movies online to date (region 2, except where specified) :

2004	Kill Bill Vol.2
2004	Kill Bill Vol.1
2004	Kill Bill Vol.1 (R1 DVD)
2004	Reservoir Dogs: Special Edition
2002	Jackie Brown: Collector's Edition (R1 DVD)
2002	Pulp Fiction: Classic Collection Box Set
2000	Reservoir Dogs

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: