Directed by:
Quentin TarantinoScreenplay:
Quentin TarantinoCinematography:
Robert RichardsonComposer:
RZACast:
Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny Chiba, Chia-Hui Liu, Michael Parks (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
The Bride wakes up after a long coma. The baby that she carried before entering the coma is gone. The only thing on her mind is to have revenge on the assassination team that betrayed her - a team she was once part of. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (13)
Classic Tarantino - some here will celebrate him, others will hate him. Personally, I don't know. Until the final fight I thought it was a decent average, but then it turned into such incredibly stupid crap, with people flying through the air like in The Matrix and blood spurting out of limbs, it made me wonder whether Quentin was just fucking with us. Uma Thurman in the lead role is now a cinematic icon, Tarantino in the chair is admirable, but this is more like one big parody. There are lots of sidetracks from the plot, some scenes are great, others nonsensical as if from another movie, but the finale (girl with a ball, screaming Japanese guys, blood…) killed any attempt at a legitimate action flick and turned Kill Bill into one big WTF.
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Forget about seeing just another Tarantino flick. There’s none of his typical catchphrases, nor a plethora of absurd situations. One of the few echoes of his first two films is the absurd scene in the hospital when "Buck comes to fuck" and then his favourite ordering of the plot into chapters. At times I was emotionally moved, at times I was thinking, "Is he being serious? We're supposed to buy this?" But I didn't move a muscle the whole time I was sitting in my chair. There are scenes with a very magical atmosphere, especially the final duel with in the snowy Japanese garden, with Lucy Liu in a white dress and slippers, falling snowflakes and contrasting with Uma Thurman's yellow suit, all beautifully lit and the interesting sound of a water pump. Or for example the moment when during one of the fights the background suddenly changes to a blue screen with black frames, with only the silhouettes of the fighters in front of it is very impressive. Kill Bill has so many audio-visual sensations that the hour and a half was more than enough. The plot may be shallow (the final sentence made me feel like I was hearing a snippet from a soap opera), but form overwhelmingly wins over content. Tarantino managed to turn a well-trodden genre and not very original premise into a very impressive spectacle. We'll see with Volume 2 if it holds up. PS: This film must be watched in widescreen! It loses a lot with the TV crop.
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The positives are clear: it's nice and colorful, it's got a good camera and nice hit music. It also has a "cool" pulp aesthetic. That's what pets like, right? And it's sweet postmodern “shit". A beautiful video clip. Great craft, Quentin is good at that. As well as magnificent boredom and the best filmed vacuum I can imagine. Pulp Fiction may have been silly, but at least it had something inside. Kill Bill is only able to pile up clip sequences and obscure the absolute lack of narrative dynamics with subtitled chapters, nice manga sequences, and a stylish (and utterly self-serving) narrative multi-voice. Dear Quentin, I thought I didn't like you, but Kill Bill brings a whole new intensity to our relationship. And Uma is quite pretty... It's a good thing you and I have something to talk about, man. Bleh!
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If there’s one film that loudly argues that Quentin Tarantino is an even better director than screenwriter, that would be Kill BillVol. 1. It’s an INCREDIBLY well shot series of micro-stories, whose grouping and method of (in)closure may be questionable, but every second fully reflects the inexhaustible genius of one anointed filmmaker. Unfortunately, Quentin uses his supporting actors as surprisingly passive pawns on a journey through East Asian cinematic attractions, and he often blatantly revels in his own audiovisual perfection, but it’s impossible not to love it. The film is one big goosebumps fest, caused by the unearthly staging of the action accompanied by one amazing track after another (although the final fight, for example, loses its impact quickly, mainly due to the annoying black-and-white composition), and the subjective length is somewhere around 80 minutes. It's a kind of unpretentious treat that is simply a joy to watch, even though it doesn't have that much to do with the sequel and works more like porn for geeks than a starter of a complex and layered story. 80%
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The last time I met Bill was about twenty years ago. Since then, time has taken its cruel toll on me and David Carradine. I gave this film five stars back in the day, and I'd happily give it five stars again today because I enjoyed all those gory action scenes (yes, including the animated ones) and the cheesy clichés that Tarantino deliberately used in the film (with glee, I’m sure). I was even willing to get over all those many logic holes except for one. The waking up from a four-year coma was a bit too much for me. I guess I take it personally, but I just couldn’t get over that bullshit. I was only dead for four days, spent the next month staring intensely at the ceiling, and when they finally managed to sit me up after that relatively short period of time, I found that the speed of the earth's rotation had dramatically increased, so I had to be propped up to keep from collapsing. And then it took ten days of practice before my useless rubber limbs started resembling legs again. So, all that nonsense about just thirteen hours after four years made me take one star off my rating. Otherwise, the film was a standard Tarantino wackiness (just the way I like it) as in: a lot of severed body parts, oodles of blood (black and white, animated, and regular), and a bunch of over-the-top nonsense (the kind that I didn’t mind). I was just surprised by how light on dialogue it was. / Lesson learned: Enjoy life.
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