The opening black-and-white sequence has some contrast issues, but it’s smooth sailing from there on out. Colors are expectedly vivid, but gone are the edges and halos of the initial release.
KILL BILL VOLUME 1 MOVIE
1 may have been too much movie for standard DVD, but not so for this Blu-ray release. Which is more or less the problem with the film: Tarantino is too busy making shout-outs to every other film under the sun to ever make his own, let alone have an original idea. The film’s angry violence is expertly cued to the noise-and-funk on the soundtrack, but the constant bloodletting is more desensitizing than provocative. Thurman makes for a remarkable woman warrior (her performance is certainly more emotional than the film that carries it), but it’s unfortunate that her empowerment rituals depend on Tarantino’s permission. Tarantino repeatedly tortures The Bride before allowing her to summon her rage.
1 is essentially a pop culture wanker’s failed multimedia experiment, a vacuous junk heap of dorky gags and riffs, violent anime and offensive slapstick. But, even then, who gets the credit: Tarantino or the film’s editing? Kill Bill: Vol. Yes, some of the gags are funny, but one or two were bound to stick when you have 20 or 30 of them flying at you at once. The only thing missing from the film is the self-congratulatory laugh track. Everything in the film is a joke: the gargantuan intertitles, the caps lock used for some of the English subtitles, the chopsocky music, the recycled catch phrases (“Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids” and “Even Steven”), the Star Trek references, and so on. Her scenes are Tarantino’s only attempts at social provocation, toying with the innocent nymphet fantasies common to Japanese culture and turning them upside down.
2, gets a mere cameo here when she pays The Bride a visit at the hospital worthy of “Melrose Place.” Chiaki Kuriyama, as a school-girl-cum-bodyguard, more of less steals the film.
KILL BILL VOLUME 1 DRIVER
Elle Driver (Daryll Hannah), who’ll presumably meet her end in Kill Bill: Vol. Fox) in Los Angeles and O-Ren Ishi (Lucy Liu) in snowy Japan. For volume one of Kill Bill, Thurman’s killer babe gets to play the samurai with Vernita Green (Vivica A. The Bride Wore Black meets Charlie’s Angels when Uma Thurman’s nameless protagonista (referred to as The Bride) wakes up from a four-year coma and decides to eliminate the titular mob boss’s motley crew of assassins who put her there. So says the half-film’s opening maxim, which the director more or less uses as an apologia for the icy, paper-thin madness that ensues. Until then, you’ll have to settle for the soulless mixtape that is Kill Bill: Vol. And thanks to the almighty Harvey Weinstein, audiences won’t get to see his entire Kill Bill compilation for another year (warm up those DVD players!). Quentin Tarantino isn’t a filmmaker-he’s a disc jockey.
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