SCHWING! is the key word here. That's the sound of Uma Thurman slicing away at flesh like a Japanese chef with skill that makes you "ooooh" and "aaaah." Except unlike the men on Iron Chef, she's chopping up human flesh, and baby, you know you like it. She keeps a-slashin' and a-thrashin' with her samurai sword, and there's blood starting to pour and guts all over the floor, and if you could vomit from joy, you would.
Tarantino's back. And thank God his idea of Japan isn't Pikachu.
"Gotta kill 'em all" is more his motto. So in Kill Bill, Vol. 1, the body count is ridiculous, but cool to watch add up. And somehow he makes his heroine Black Mamba (Thurman) beautiful, even sympathetic, as she disembowels a dozen bodyguards in one slick swoop. This is four years after her former assassin colleagues murdered her husband and unborn child at her wedding. Their boss, Bill (David Carradine), is the one that delivers the bullet to her brain, sending her into a coma. When she wakes up, she has the title in mind.
But she writes a list of all the old friends she has to slice n' dice first. Not that we see her go down the list in chronological order. Quentin Tarantino does his Quentin Tarantino thing, shuffling the sequence of events so that you think "so that's why such-and-such happened the way it did." Which proves interesting yet again, but the only flaw in this method is that the outcome of the climax isn't really a surprise.
Oh, well. She still carves the bad guys up.
But the best villains are the bad girls. First (or last, 'cause of Tarantino's chronological switcheroo) is the sassily beautiful Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), who's made a new life for herself by the time Black Mamba comes around town with that vendetta of hers. There's an elaborate fight scene in Vernita's home until about a billion shards of glass are everywhere, and the house needs a visit from Trading Spaces.
An hour and several bloody bodies later, we arrive at the climactic fight scene in a Japanese club/restaurant, which is really the highlight of the movie. Black Mamba catches up with bad girl O-Ren Ishi (Lucy Liu), who became an assassin because of a sad back story that's told through Japanese anime, Pokémon-free. Liu's O-Ren seems all the more formidable because of Quentin's incredible ability to turn anyone into an icon with the right slow motion shot.
Anyways, O-Ren brings out the bodyguards. The first is Go-Go, a teenager in a schoolgirl outfit with a spikeless mace she swings around when she's mad.
Then it's the 100+ guys in black suits who all look the same. Think Asian versions of the Agent Smiths in Reloaded. Except the difference is blood. Lots of blood. Showers of blood. Bring an umbrella.
But underneath the violence (buckets of blood) is a certain touch of elegance (downpours) that Tarantino (monsoons) hasn't explored before. As a movie that pays tribute to old Samurai films, Tarantino brings a sense of beauty and even grace (oceans) to Kill Bill that Pulp Fiction barely touched. In the final fight scene especially, Tarantino pulls off a smooth, well-polished battle devoid of his classic BOOMS and BLAMS.
Well, all that said, I guess it's finally time to forgive Uma for Batman and Robin.
Eric Glover. Eric Glover, who has wanted to fly since early childhood, is honored to be a part of the Silver Chips print staff. He is using Silver Chips to hone his writing skills in an effort towards becoming an author in the future. He prefers to … More »
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