![]() ![]() Couldn't Tarantino have simply written the film so the less epic fight came first? Well, perhaps not, as Vol. 1's structure exists, it would seem, to ensure that the final, more outlandish, fight occurs at the end of the film rather than its chronologically appropriate time before the shorter duel between Copperhead and The Bride (once code-named "Black Mamba"). Where the non-linear storytelling of Pulp Fiction added a degree of excitement to its freewheeling joy, the temporal distortion of Kill Bill is more an affectation, a holdover from the writer-director's apparent need to live by Jean-Luc Godard's maxim, "A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end.but not necessarily in that order." Vol. ![]() Fox), a colleague in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, is not the first name on The Bride's list, we later learn, and Tarantino eventually doubles back to cover that as well. ![]() The woman, Jeannie Bell a.k.a.Vernita Green a.k.a. Then we leap four years into the future as she tracks down one of the people of her old squad of assassins who betrayed her. She only has time to tell her tormentor, "Bill, it's your baby" before she's shot in the head and sent into a coma. Tarantino, of course, tells the story out of order, so we meet The Bride (Uma Thurman) when she's beaten to a pulp and awaiting the worst. Good thing, too, as it keeps me from focusing too deeply on the plot. Even as someone whose understanding of visual composition extends only so far as a loose grasp on the rule of thirds (which this film helped me learn), I stand mesmerized by Tarantino's acuity. 1 is, quite possibly, the most immaculately composed action movie since Kurosawa's Yojimbo or High and Low. 1 is a film that announces that it's style over substance from the start, one built on a story of vengeance that affords more emotional weight to a samurai sword than the plight of its wronged heroine (in this installment at least). 1 is the more audacious: who else but Tarantino would dare to open his film with a stark black-and-white shot of a pregnant woman begging for her life, then jump from that scene and the somber opening credits to a brightly lit, dazzlingly quaint suburb where two hot chicks engage in a kung fu fight straight out of an exploitation movie? Yes, Kill Bill: Vol. Luis Bacalov's “The Grand Duel (Parte Prima)” is fittingly melodramatic for this story, as is Zamfir’s campy panflute cover of James Last’s “The Lonely Shepherd,” which sounds like the theme song to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill is a two-part "movie-movie" that tells one story yet begs to be considered separately of its two films, not simply because the they project largely different moods but because each is such an orgiastic display of obscure film knowledge that even a reviewer who largely does not recognize and identify the majority of the references to Western and Eastern cinema outside of broad genre familiarity (such as this reviewer) cannot hope to contain the films' sheer sense of mimetic revelry in one review. ![]() Where Tarantino’s past soundtracks abounded with twangy surf guitar songs, here he leans harder on the Ennio Morricone–inspired spaghetti western instrumentals to capture a classic gunfighter vibe. Similarly, Charlie Feathers' rockabilly boot-stomper “That Certain Female” perfectly taps into the cocksure swagger of antagonist Bill (played by David Carradine). And there’s really no better way to set the tone than by opening with Nancy Sinatra’s torch song “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down).” Sinatra’s haunting version of Sonny Bono's song might lead the listener to believe that Tarantino based the plight of his protagonist bride (played by Uma Thurman) on this song’s riveting narrative. But it’s his carefully curated soundtracks that tell a story within the story. The moral of the story in Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill is simple: there’s nothing like revenge. ![]()
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