The Reinvention of Chopsloitation. Review on Kill Bill Movie

As quintessentially Tarantino as Quentin Tarantino can get, Kill Bill Vol.1 is also the film the most dissimilar to the manic director’s past work (the genre-referencing and genre-defining crime trilogy that is Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, which since their induction have generated a multitude of imitators and misbegotten progenies) but this one’s also his most inevitable. After tackling high influences in John Woo and Hong Kong crime cinema, Tarantino finds himself on the crossroads and pointed in the most appropriate direction, HK’s sister genres, Japanese Ronin epics and buoyant splatter-fests. And with all the blatant homage on display, what would a Tarantino film be without self-reference; hence an abundance of allusions to his own established crime world, as this is suggested to be existing on a parallel plane, and preserved amounts of Sergio Leone that Tarantino’s associate Robert Rodriguez aspired for in the failed Once Upon a Time in Mexico (a title not only suggested by Tarantino to Rodriguez but through Leone, natch), however, the slippage of amalgamating homage with supple reshaping is what separates the two.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (titled so because the original length stretched four hours and was broken into two volumes, and similarly to The Matrix: Revolutions, Vol. 2’s release is a few months already long overdue) works gushingly on two levels that are frappéd and remolded as one: as the expanse of pulp film art into the action movie and as the satirical revenge fantasy spread onto the vistas of foreign and 1960s go-go counterculture. Achieving something exceptional in terms of chopsploitation camp and yet with art-house undertones, the film also succeeds in another measurement of Tarantino’s signature, its marriage of the old with the new. From its parallels it draws, and exists as something original, from a cavalcade of Asian elements particularly the Shaw Brothers chop-socky, Yu Wang, yakuza thrillers, anime (utilizing an extended animated sequence that’s strangely one of the most emotional sequences I’ve seen this year courtesy of Luis Bacalov’s “the Grand Duel”) and modern bloodbaths like Ryuhei Kitamura’s Versus.

Presenting, as well, a love letter to the duality of Bruce Lee, a battle against his dichotomy (or its tableau’s use of West vs. East, while assimilating them) is assembled in the images of the Game of Death yellow jump-suit against his Kato Americanization in the Green Hornet (whose frantic theme song is used to startling good effect) action figure, and not to mention the surf rock that forged Pulp Fiction’s use of Dick Dale’s Misirlou into legendary status. Adjacent to its eloquent use of reference is probably the best art direction in any of Tarantino’s films, with flawlessly characteristic sets, a mix of black & white and lighting, gorgeously captured by DP Robert Richardson in step to the original (fluidly done by RZA) and non-original music that aspires for the most daring of things told well. Sure the film is clogged with style but that’s also its main objective. The classically structured story formula is something that Tarantino’s always screwed around with and here he’s abandoned it at whole, brilliantly.

Constructed as a pulp novel, or perhaps manga, kind of like Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums with its chapter format but with less narrative cohesion, the yarn spins the tale of The Bride (Uma Thurman, breathtaking and also credited for having co-concocted the story with Q) who was once known as “Black Mamba” in the mysterious Deadly Viper Assassination Squad led by “masochistic” Bill (David Carradine), and consisting of Verita “Copperhead” Green (Vivica A. Fox), O-Ren “Cottonmouth” Ishi (Lucy Liu, whose presence is the only relation to anything remotely Charlie’s Angels), Elle “California Mountain Snake” Driver (Darryl Hannah), and Budd “Sidewinder” (Michael Madsen). Apparently betrayed by her companions and leader on her wedding day, pregnant with Bill’s child, The Bride winds up on the floor, splattered in blood, then in the hospital and a metal plate away from death. Jolted from a coma some four years later after the shock of memories lingering and a mosquito bite, The Bride plans and begins to execute her determined revenge, arriving in Japan and training with guest star Sonny Chiba.

The film is excessively top-heavy in violence and blood spray, and that’s not to be unknown walking in, particularly those unfamiliar with Takashi Miike or Kinji Fukasaku (films that have helped desensitize the Japanese nation dutifully). The blood-worship lost in Tarantino’s previous gun-lust is now made prevalent and the American discomfort with such blood-lust stands the challenge in a test that the Japanese have mastered and grown to admire endlessly. The violence is so throbbing and bountiful in its pace it becomes a sexual manifestation in a film that correctly lacks sex and a primary amount of sex appeal, despite the appetizing cat-fight destruction of everything in the trajectory. Its consciousness of its violence-sexuality connection and replacement becomes the astounding driving force of its thematic strengths, while on the surface its consciousness weirdly but appropriately exhibits this through Bill’s sword-hilt, phallus stroking. Meanwhile, its orgy of dismembered limbs and storms of blood are the consequence of Tarantino’s acute understanding of the Samurai’s mechanical revenge drive. Of course, the puerile adrenaline of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is not without its necessary pauses and subtle reflections that balance the chaos into a meditation of pure focus.

If one must find a major fault with Kill Bill: Vol. 1 then it is to be in the heavy promotion that it is the fourth film by Tarantino when it is technically the fifth and a quarter film if considering his discounted early no-budget 16mm effort called My Best Friend’s Birthday and his The Man from Hollywood segment in the quadruple misfire of Four Rooms. I also can’t help but wonder if Vol. 2 will be advertised as the fifth-directed Tarantino movie as it is now technically a separate film. But nonetheless, this volume is a triumph and then some. A true perfection of the film lovers passion and genre analysis that doesn’t simply invoke homage but lives it as a parallel film lost from an age of genuineness, found in an age of disingenuousness. More than a decade since Tarantino’s major arrival onto the film circuit, he crystallizes his reputation and maturely proves his diabolical talent, revitalizing what he did then and what he does best, getting people excited about the cinema.