Ahnk Reviews: Kill Bill Volume One
Quentin Tarantino is a violent man. Perhaps he was beaten as a child. A favorite target of the school bully. His dad may have been an alcoholic. The cause is unknown and irrelevant to the casual observer. Still, it is pointed to mention that Kill Bill is the most violent movies that Disney has ever released. In fact, it is one of the most violent movies in the past decade, and likely one of the most violent movies ever released in North America. That said, if you are squeamish, Kill Bill will not be your movie. But if you are not opposed to swordplay, then allow me to sum the movie up by saying that the last time violence was so masterfully directed and presented in such a riveting fashion was American History X. And if that isn’t saying something, I don’t know what is.
In any case, I felt it fitting that one of the most violent movies in recent memory would be reviewed by TRF’s most dangerous man. You might be surprised that I am indeed TRF’s most dangerous man. You might figure that with Kas’ large collection of guns, Gash’s feral and unrelenting hatred towards everything, or Lup’s uncontrollable cocaine habit, that anyone of them could easily handle a wild Ahnk. Well, Kas COULD shoot me, but anyone can shoot anyone and if he brought a knife to a knife fight, I would eat his babies. Gash has admitted he is a tea-drinking pacifist and is possibly homosexual, so I could likely beat him up too. And Lup might beat my ass, but it would be a mutual ass pounding session if Lup and I were ever to lock horns. No, I could beat each of them up. But this doesn’t make me dangerous.
Dangerous is not being physically threatening but being mentally unpredictable. Take Gandhi. You know Gandhi could have just said, “Screw it” at any time and opened up a can of whoop ass with his collection of loyal followers, but the guy was all there, upstairs. On the other hand, a seemingly out of shape and physically unimpressive Charles Manson is dangerous because he is not all there, and he could eat one of your limbs at any second for no apparent reason. Unpredictability is the spice of life. Well, I’m chili.
My unpredictability makes me hard to satisfy. My tastes for television, music, food, activity, and political propaganda fluctuate with my wild and uncontrollable mood. There are really only two things I enjoy with an unwavering regard, and that is the music of Matthew Good, and hardcore pornography. Kill Bill contains neither. But when I finally partook of viewing it, I was expecting a blockbuster. Tarantino is very hit and miss with me. I hated Jackie Brown, and I thought Pulp Fiction was overrated, but Reservoir Dogs is a genius film. That said, each was hyped heavily, and the more hyped a film is, the greater a chance it will fail. So, coming in to the movie being notoriously non-committal to the majority of movies and very hard to please, it would be predicted that I might not enjoy Kill Bill. Well, I saw it once. And then I watched it again. I’ve seen it 5 times and I HAVE LOVED IT EVERY TIME.
I will relate Kill Bill to a movie that I really like, the Usual Suspects. It is no doubt that the Usual Suspects is one of the best movies ever made. It is great, with all the twists, and the storytelling and acting is great. The casting is awesome, the writing is good, it had a good soundtrack, and the action is good without being overblown. But I have seen the Usual Suspects six times and only ever really liked it 3 times. The first time I saw it, I thought it was great. But the more you watch it, the more you become dissuaded with it. You get the feeling that you’ve been there before. It’s much like picture day in high school. It’s the same every time. Nothing in the movie really rivets you and demands you to watch. Don’t get me wrong, it’s in my top ten of movies for sure and it’s one of the best suspense movies ever. But when you remove the suspense, it is just a good movie. It is not a great movie for back-to-back viewings.
Kill Bill is a different kind of beast. It has suspense, yes. But in minute scope, Kill Bill is a revenge movie, so knowing this you’d figure that buckets of blood and maiming would be the norm. You would be correct, but don’t walk away… Kill Bill is not a one-trick pony. A review once said that buckets of blood, sometimes sickeningly graphic and sometimes downright silly in their over-the-top nature couldn’t save a movie from utter pointlessness. Thus, Tarantino mans the blood hose appropriately. In the two most riveting deaths in the movie, the use of blood is minimalistic at best. Take for example when Vernita Green is murdered. She doesn’t lie in a puddle of blood; she falls into a pile of cheerios. When O’Ren Ishii’s brain is exposed by a swift stroke of the sword, the only blood you see is the blood that spatters on the snow when the Bride clears her blade. The visual is awesome, and the understated nature of the brutality gives it an almost chivalrous quality. You can feel the respect to movies that came before by not having her get decapitated like in so many big budget blockbusters.
I’m not by any means trying to downplay the blood in the slightest. A large chunk of the movie, this movies equivalent of the burly brawl, is possibly the goriest scene in an American movie. But a good chunk of it is done in black and white. I realize that the black and white is likely homage to the great Samurai movies in which this was developed in the vein of, but as a directorial decision I like it for two reasons. First, removing the large red fountains of blood removes the true graphicness of the scene. I equate it to black and white war movies. Arms and limbs are being chopped off and bodies flayed about by grenades and bullets, but you can sit and eat your popcorn and enjoy it without being forced to vomit. Now go watch the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan. It’s visceral and disturbing almost to the point of being disgusting. It dehumanizes it, to a point, by shifting to black and white. Makes you KNOW that this is a piece of fiction and a large degree of shock and disgust is averted. Also, the use of black and white in limited qualities runs along the same vein of the bits of color in Schindler’s List. I first made the connection the first time I saw the splatter line I mentioned above in the snow. The use of black and white to convey the violence makes it much, MUCH more important. It makes it stand out. It makes it epic. Watch the opening scene, with a blood spattered bride rendered in crisp and clear black and white, panting, and tell me that doesn’t immediately draw you in. Make no mistake, the black and white dehumanized the burly brawl but it really made you slide your ass forward in the seat and watch the opening scene. It’s a technique that downplays the violence, at the same time casting it in a unique light and making you watch. People losing limbs and being sawed in half with swords naturally makes you cringe and look away. But when I watched the movie with my parents, my squeamish mother cringed, but her eyes remained on the screen. Anyone who says Quentin Tarantino is not a great actor is positively out of their mind.
One complaint I heard about the movie was that much of it was unoriginal. And all I have to say about that is that that is a bullshit argument, which is irrelevant to the movie. The fact is that no movie is ever truly original. There are basically only ten movies that can fit into a movie, and the rest are just amalgamations of the ten. They say some scenes were just ripped straight of old black and white samurai movies. Really? What gave you that impression, the fact that Tarantino said he was basing much of the movie on the samurai films that enjoyed growing up? I mean, come on. A movie with yakuza in it doesn’t steal at all from samurai movies, that’s like saying A League Of Their Own didn’t steal from baseball. You want to know why this argument falls apart? It does so at the beginning of the movie. On the screen flashes the awesome line that Revenge is a dish best served cold. But not crediting it to the Chinese, he instead throws it out to the Klingon philosophers. This is his way of saying, fuck you, I’ll do what I want. He wanted to make a movie that was fun and at times humorous, a movie where he didn’t constantly have to masturbate his ego by reinventing the entire industry. This is Tarantino doing his damndest to make the best movie he’s ever seen. If that means he has to steal from Lizzy F’n Maguire, you’ll see that little jailbait punk in the damn movie. He very much wanted to make this his movie, but at the same time, make it a great movie. I think he managed to do both.
Now, my favorite character in the movie is a perfect example of Tarantino at his best. Not so much as a director as it is about him as a writer. My favorite character, who undoubtedly steals the show, is Sophie Fatale. But, but, Sean, I hear you saying, what about Bill? There’s no doubt that Bill’s inhumanity towards the Bride is great, well written work that is expertly delivered and I have no doubt that with the second volume of the movie, he will be the focal character and will carry much of it on his back. But what about GoGo Yubari? You can never get enough GoGoLove, and her ability to combine sexual innuendo and murder has the ability to be both erotic and revolting at the same time, not to mention that I mark for a psychopath in a schoolgirl outfit. What about Hanzo? While the interplay between Hanzo and his “general” is possibly the best two man display in a movie I’ve seen, especially as the bald dick talks down to the Bride unaware that she speaks Japanese and is homicidal, but the scene isn’t long and the for honor and glory Hanzo is one of the slower parts of the movie. No, the best character of the movie is Sophie Fatale. It begins when get a glimpse of her. She is positively smoking. And she looks like a Romulan. She is so stiff and fixated in her look and mannerisms. When she walks down the stairs and the lady at the bottom bows and she doesn’t flinch. Her casual disregard for human life, answering her cell phone at the scene of a brutal execution. That is her at her height of arrogance. And then Tarantino proceeds to tear her down. He turns her into a sniveling, crying, and whining bitch who you are to glad to see die, only to have her live, and be rolled down a hill, her one arm bouncing up and down off the snow. The final scene, with her crying in the hands of Bill, her hair disheveled and unkempt, bruised, and with tears running down her face turns what could have been a minor character into a deep, full human being at both her highs, and her lows. The ability of the writer to turn throwaway characters, Hanzo, GoGo, and Sophia into deep and complex variations of human life is incredible, and further drives home the mastery of the art of movies that Quentin possesses.
That said, there are parts of the movie that could be done without. The scene where The Bride casually offers the child a chance at vengeance is just stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s a waste of time and does more to deconstruct and dehumanize the character of the Bride then anything else. Maybe that’s the point. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you, but to me it seemed just to remind us that she is not a hero, that instead she is a psychopath and we should not worship her. Which is stupid, because she is killing Yakuzas and assassins. Obviously, if she were attacking old ladies at the supermarket and burning kittens, we would want to be dehumanized by her casual regard to killing a mother in front of her child. But she isn’t, so the only thing this scene spells to me is “volume 3”, and with volume 2 still in production when they shot it, it seems stupid. Speaking of volume 2, if you’re worried that this movie is going to be half of a movie and you want to watch the sequel and the original back-to-back, I would advise that you wait. While Kill Bill has both the scope and mastery to be a complete film, it does in all honesty end a bit abruptly, and the movie constantly drops little morsels here and there that set up the second movie. The cameo by Elle Driver gives her a strong character already; the one line uttered by Budd is evidence that Madsen is back to work as the best supporting actor in Hollywood. But this is all thrown away because it’s just a damn teaser. The last line in the movie, when you hear it, will blow you away but then you’ll kick yourself if you have to wait for the next movie. It CAN be watched on it’s own, and enjoyed, but with the second movie about 3 months away from a DVD release, you will want to wait for it and buy the two together. I don’t know anything about the quality of the second movie and if I did I would review it on it’s own merit. This is a review of volume one and as such I address the issue of whether or not this comes across as a complete movie.
The answer is yes. While it does end abruptly, all movies end. While it does set up a sequel, it would stupid not to, considering how masterful a creation it was. The bottom line is that Kill Bill, volume one, stands on it’s own as a movie. It does not need a sequel to complete it. As it is, Kill Bill is a good movie. I would go so far as to say it is one of the best movies of all time. The mix of awesome action, excellent and unprecedented character development, an excellent fast plot that never feels too frantic and takes time to build, and a kick ass soundtrack with excellent direction mesh together to make one of the best productions of American cinema since George Washington created the world. The fact that there is another movie coming that promises to be as good if not better then this one is a tremendous boon but in the end is unneeded. If Bill, in the final moments of the movie, were announced as having died off screen in a tragic badger attack, the movie would still kick 88 shades of ass. Thus, I am not going to give any bullshit and take minor demerits to be anything more then what they are, as they in no way derail this masterpiece of a film. Kill Bill Volume 1 earns a five-star rating on a five-star scale. There will never be a flawless movie. But if you’re not averse to a little dismemberment among friends, then you might as well just pretend this is.
Quentin Tarantino is a violent man. Perhaps he was beaten as a child. A favorite target of the school bully. His dad may have been an alcoholic. The cause is unknown and irrelevant to the casual observer. Still, it is pointed to mention that Kill Bill is the most violent movies that Disney has ever released. In fact, it is one of the most violent movies in the past decade, and likely one of the most violent movies ever released in North America. That said, if you are squeamish, Kill Bill will not be your movie. But if you are not opposed to swordplay, then allow me to sum the movie up by saying that the last time violence was so masterfully directed and presented in such a riveting fashion was American History X. And if that isn’t saying something, I don’t know what is.
In any case, I felt it fitting that one of the most violent movies in recent memory would be reviewed by TRF’s most dangerous man. You might be surprised that I am indeed TRF’s most dangerous man. You might figure that with Kas’ large collection of guns, Gash’s feral and unrelenting hatred towards everything, or Lup’s uncontrollable cocaine habit, that anyone of them could easily handle a wild Ahnk. Well, Kas COULD shoot me, but anyone can shoot anyone and if he brought a knife to a knife fight, I would eat his babies. Gash has admitted he is a tea-drinking pacifist and is possibly homosexual, so I could likely beat him up too. And Lup might beat my ass, but it would be a mutual ass pounding session if Lup and I were ever to lock horns. No, I could beat each of them up. But this doesn’t make me dangerous.
Dangerous is not being physically threatening but being mentally unpredictable. Take Gandhi. You know Gandhi could have just said, “Screw it” at any time and opened up a can of whoop ass with his collection of loyal followers, but the guy was all there, upstairs. On the other hand, a seemingly out of shape and physically unimpressive Charles Manson is dangerous because he is not all there, and he could eat one of your limbs at any second for no apparent reason. Unpredictability is the spice of life. Well, I’m chili.
My unpredictability makes me hard to satisfy. My tastes for television, music, food, activity, and political propaganda fluctuate with my wild and uncontrollable mood. There are really only two things I enjoy with an unwavering regard, and that is the music of Matthew Good, and hardcore pornography. Kill Bill contains neither. But when I finally partook of viewing it, I was expecting a blockbuster. Tarantino is very hit and miss with me. I hated Jackie Brown, and I thought Pulp Fiction was overrated, but Reservoir Dogs is a genius film. That said, each was hyped heavily, and the more hyped a film is, the greater a chance it will fail. So, coming in to the movie being notoriously non-committal to the majority of movies and very hard to please, it would be predicted that I might not enjoy Kill Bill. Well, I saw it once. And then I watched it again. I’ve seen it 5 times and I HAVE LOVED IT EVERY TIME.
I will relate Kill Bill to a movie that I really like, the Usual Suspects. It is no doubt that the Usual Suspects is one of the best movies ever made. It is great, with all the twists, and the storytelling and acting is great. The casting is awesome, the writing is good, it had a good soundtrack, and the action is good without being overblown. But I have seen the Usual Suspects six times and only ever really liked it 3 times. The first time I saw it, I thought it was great. But the more you watch it, the more you become dissuaded with it. You get the feeling that you’ve been there before. It’s much like picture day in high school. It’s the same every time. Nothing in the movie really rivets you and demands you to watch. Don’t get me wrong, it’s in my top ten of movies for sure and it’s one of the best suspense movies ever. But when you remove the suspense, it is just a good movie. It is not a great movie for back-to-back viewings.
Kill Bill is a different kind of beast. It has suspense, yes. But in minute scope, Kill Bill is a revenge movie, so knowing this you’d figure that buckets of blood and maiming would be the norm. You would be correct, but don’t walk away… Kill Bill is not a one-trick pony. A review once said that buckets of blood, sometimes sickeningly graphic and sometimes downright silly in their over-the-top nature couldn’t save a movie from utter pointlessness. Thus, Tarantino mans the blood hose appropriately. In the two most riveting deaths in the movie, the use of blood is minimalistic at best. Take for example when Vernita Green is murdered. She doesn’t lie in a puddle of blood; she falls into a pile of cheerios. When O’Ren Ishii’s brain is exposed by a swift stroke of the sword, the only blood you see is the blood that spatters on the snow when the Bride clears her blade. The visual is awesome, and the understated nature of the brutality gives it an almost chivalrous quality. You can feel the respect to movies that came before by not having her get decapitated like in so many big budget blockbusters.
I’m not by any means trying to downplay the blood in the slightest. A large chunk of the movie, this movies equivalent of the burly brawl, is possibly the goriest scene in an American movie. But a good chunk of it is done in black and white. I realize that the black and white is likely homage to the great Samurai movies in which this was developed in the vein of, but as a directorial decision I like it for two reasons. First, removing the large red fountains of blood removes the true graphicness of the scene. I equate it to black and white war movies. Arms and limbs are being chopped off and bodies flayed about by grenades and bullets, but you can sit and eat your popcorn and enjoy it without being forced to vomit. Now go watch the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan. It’s visceral and disturbing almost to the point of being disgusting. It dehumanizes it, to a point, by shifting to black and white. Makes you KNOW that this is a piece of fiction and a large degree of shock and disgust is averted. Also, the use of black and white in limited qualities runs along the same vein of the bits of color in Schindler’s List. I first made the connection the first time I saw the splatter line I mentioned above in the snow. The use of black and white to convey the violence makes it much, MUCH more important. It makes it stand out. It makes it epic. Watch the opening scene, with a blood spattered bride rendered in crisp and clear black and white, panting, and tell me that doesn’t immediately draw you in. Make no mistake, the black and white dehumanized the burly brawl but it really made you slide your ass forward in the seat and watch the opening scene. It’s a technique that downplays the violence, at the same time casting it in a unique light and making you watch. People losing limbs and being sawed in half with swords naturally makes you cringe and look away. But when I watched the movie with my parents, my squeamish mother cringed, but her eyes remained on the screen. Anyone who says Quentin Tarantino is not a great actor is positively out of their mind.
One complaint I heard about the movie was that much of it was unoriginal. And all I have to say about that is that that is a bullshit argument, which is irrelevant to the movie. The fact is that no movie is ever truly original. There are basically only ten movies that can fit into a movie, and the rest are just amalgamations of the ten. They say some scenes were just ripped straight of old black and white samurai movies. Really? What gave you that impression, the fact that Tarantino said he was basing much of the movie on the samurai films that enjoyed growing up? I mean, come on. A movie with yakuza in it doesn’t steal at all from samurai movies, that’s like saying A League Of Their Own didn’t steal from baseball. You want to know why this argument falls apart? It does so at the beginning of the movie. On the screen flashes the awesome line that Revenge is a dish best served cold. But not crediting it to the Chinese, he instead throws it out to the Klingon philosophers. This is his way of saying, fuck you, I’ll do what I want. He wanted to make a movie that was fun and at times humorous, a movie where he didn’t constantly have to masturbate his ego by reinventing the entire industry. This is Tarantino doing his damndest to make the best movie he’s ever seen. If that means he has to steal from Lizzy F’n Maguire, you’ll see that little jailbait punk in the damn movie. He very much wanted to make this his movie, but at the same time, make it a great movie. I think he managed to do both.
Now, my favorite character in the movie is a perfect example of Tarantino at his best. Not so much as a director as it is about him as a writer. My favorite character, who undoubtedly steals the show, is Sophie Fatale. But, but, Sean, I hear you saying, what about Bill? There’s no doubt that Bill’s inhumanity towards the Bride is great, well written work that is expertly delivered and I have no doubt that with the second volume of the movie, he will be the focal character and will carry much of it on his back. But what about GoGo Yubari? You can never get enough GoGoLove, and her ability to combine sexual innuendo and murder has the ability to be both erotic and revolting at the same time, not to mention that I mark for a psychopath in a schoolgirl outfit. What about Hanzo? While the interplay between Hanzo and his “general” is possibly the best two man display in a movie I’ve seen, especially as the bald dick talks down to the Bride unaware that she speaks Japanese and is homicidal, but the scene isn’t long and the for honor and glory Hanzo is one of the slower parts of the movie. No, the best character of the movie is Sophie Fatale. It begins when get a glimpse of her. She is positively smoking. And she looks like a Romulan. She is so stiff and fixated in her look and mannerisms. When she walks down the stairs and the lady at the bottom bows and she doesn’t flinch. Her casual disregard for human life, answering her cell phone at the scene of a brutal execution. That is her at her height of arrogance. And then Tarantino proceeds to tear her down. He turns her into a sniveling, crying, and whining bitch who you are to glad to see die, only to have her live, and be rolled down a hill, her one arm bouncing up and down off the snow. The final scene, with her crying in the hands of Bill, her hair disheveled and unkempt, bruised, and with tears running down her face turns what could have been a minor character into a deep, full human being at both her highs, and her lows. The ability of the writer to turn throwaway characters, Hanzo, GoGo, and Sophia into deep and complex variations of human life is incredible, and further drives home the mastery of the art of movies that Quentin possesses.
That said, there are parts of the movie that could be done without. The scene where The Bride casually offers the child a chance at vengeance is just stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s a waste of time and does more to deconstruct and dehumanize the character of the Bride then anything else. Maybe that’s the point. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you, but to me it seemed just to remind us that she is not a hero, that instead she is a psychopath and we should not worship her. Which is stupid, because she is killing Yakuzas and assassins. Obviously, if she were attacking old ladies at the supermarket and burning kittens, we would want to be dehumanized by her casual regard to killing a mother in front of her child. But she isn’t, so the only thing this scene spells to me is “volume 3”, and with volume 2 still in production when they shot it, it seems stupid. Speaking of volume 2, if you’re worried that this movie is going to be half of a movie and you want to watch the sequel and the original back-to-back, I would advise that you wait. While Kill Bill has both the scope and mastery to be a complete film, it does in all honesty end a bit abruptly, and the movie constantly drops little morsels here and there that set up the second movie. The cameo by Elle Driver gives her a strong character already; the one line uttered by Budd is evidence that Madsen is back to work as the best supporting actor in Hollywood. But this is all thrown away because it’s just a damn teaser. The last line in the movie, when you hear it, will blow you away but then you’ll kick yourself if you have to wait for the next movie. It CAN be watched on it’s own, and enjoyed, but with the second movie about 3 months away from a DVD release, you will want to wait for it and buy the two together. I don’t know anything about the quality of the second movie and if I did I would review it on it’s own merit. This is a review of volume one and as such I address the issue of whether or not this comes across as a complete movie.
The answer is yes. While it does end abruptly, all movies end. While it does set up a sequel, it would stupid not to, considering how masterful a creation it was. The bottom line is that Kill Bill, volume one, stands on it’s own as a movie. It does not need a sequel to complete it. As it is, Kill Bill is a good movie. I would go so far as to say it is one of the best movies of all time. The mix of awesome action, excellent and unprecedented character development, an excellent fast plot that never feels too frantic and takes time to build, and a kick ass soundtrack with excellent direction mesh together to make one of the best productions of American cinema since George Washington created the world. The fact that there is another movie coming that promises to be as good if not better then this one is a tremendous boon but in the end is unneeded. If Bill, in the final moments of the movie, were announced as having died off screen in a tragic badger attack, the movie would still kick 88 shades of ass. Thus, I am not going to give any bullshit and take minor demerits to be anything more then what they are, as they in no way derail this masterpiece of a film. Kill Bill Volume 1 earns a five-star rating on a five-star scale. There will never be a flawless movie. But if you’re not averse to a little dismemberment among friends, then you might as well just pretend this is.
