KILL BILL - Review with SPOILERS

[Terry May]

Ok I'm going to try and put in to words what I thought of this and I'll have to put in SPOILERS throughout to illustrate my point. So PLEASE DONT READ THIS IF YOU INTEND TO SEE IT - read this afterwards and tell me what you thought.

From the very outset when Uma Thurman and Vivica Fox really kick the hell out of one another you really hope that this is going to set the tone for the rest of the film which to a degree it does. Tarantino veers from his usual guns and here we have swords - samurai swords. But whereas he spawned the Mexican standoff imitators with his previous films - here with swords there is nothing we haven't seen before.

But he's a great writer with often imitated yet never bettered dialogue (who can forget the Dennis Hopper - Chris Walken face off in True Romance). This frankly could have been written by anyone. The back stories to the characters are interesting but in a fan of comic books kind of way. Lucy Liu's O-ren Ishii childhood is interesting in this way but is done via anime ( and done very well too) but there is no way it could have been filmed live action perhaps encouraging this segment to be even more violent for the very reason that it is animated. Although his usage of really dark and sinister behaviour remains - can you really justify using a glimpse of paedophilia (albeit animated) and coma rape as entertainment in what is ultimately a popcorn movie.

There are the usual homages/ steals from other movies that can get us film geeks really showing off and they are everywhere, that yellow track suit, the eye masks, the tune Daryl Hannah whistles in the hospital but to what avail?

Again he repeats things from his previous movies - the slow mo walk of the gang in reservoir dogs is repeated here with Lucy Liu and her gang in the house of blue leaves to a superb music score.

But after so much blood letting I think the climatic fight between Thurman and the Crazy 88's is a cop out. Taking an eye gouging as its cue the rest of the fight turns black and white. Is it a stylistic thing and if so why in light of all that has gone before? or was it because it was more than likely the censors here in the UK would edit it? After all there is going to be a special version with extra gore specifiacally for the asian market.

QT's talent for hopping back and forth in the story expires half way through and what we get is straight forward narrative. This playing with the story was one of the joys of 'dogs' & 'fiction'.

I've only skimmed the surface here and I know when it opens many will want to put their point of view but I desperately wanted QT to wow me with something new here but I left with a profound sense of disappointment.

It's only the last line of the film that Bill utters that intrigued me enough to see part 2 next year.

I just hope the final part of the Matrix isn't a disappointment too.

[Terry May]

So now its out what does everyone else think????

[Barney Hood]

The cut to B&W you refer to during the final fight in Kill Bill was a censorship issue more than anything - without it the final fight would never have got past the MPAA in the states and thus would have had to have been cut due to the screen being awash with large amounts of blood for much of the 15 minute period.

He also used it to refererence the Samurai battles of Akira Kurosawa in movies such as Seven Samurai and in particular Yojimbo - hence the music change the second the cut comes into effect.

Not to worry though - Japan alone gets an 'ultraviolent' release with more footage, and the final fight in full colour which should be available on DVD from Asia next year.

Barney Hood

p.s. I would take issue with anyone who says their are no quotable lines - there are plenty, but with about 50% of the film in Japanese they are not quotable by most of us!

That said I thought O-Ren Ishiis speech as she beheaded the Yakuza questioning her heritage was a classic!

[The Last Word]

Sadly a mere holding operation - there's no progression here, just QT doing exactly what he knows he can do and taking no real chances whatsoever. All sound and fury, signifying nothing, and so forth. It doesn't really whet the appetite for the cynically conceived part 2, and after ROTK has consumed the planet and bagged all the franchise medals, will anyone really care apart from the die-hards?

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"Let's do it..."