#297: Kill Bill: Volume 1

Release Date: October 10th, 2003

Format: Streaming (YouTube)

Written by: Quentin Tarantino

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino

4 Stars

There is some context to consider when assessing “Quentin Tarantino’s 4th Film,” as he proudly titles Kill Bill: Volume 1 in the movie’s opening credits, when it was released back in the fall of 2003.

Namely, the writer/director had been dormant for several years. 

When he came out of the gates writing and directing Reservoir Dogs in 1992, he was the brash wunderkind LA kid who cut his teeth working at a video store; it was all very romantic. Then he lit the cinematic world on fire two years later when he wrote and directed Pulp Fiction, which would become one of the most iconic films in the past several decades. Then shortly after, he took what many considered a curious step backwards, with 1997’s Jackie Brown, a sort of ‘70s hangout/caper movie that drew its main inspiration from blaxsploitation films from a generation earlier. Jackie Brown was more restrained than the bombastic Pulp Fiction and the menacing Reservoir Dogs. It was also Tarantino’s first non-original script; he adapted Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch (which I remember choosing as my independent reading book in 9th grade English class; I’m not sure my teacher knew it was about ex-cons running guns on the black market).

After Jackie Brown came and went with supportive critic reviews and modest box office results, Tarantino just seemed to sort of disappear. While other American auteurs garnered more and more accolades in the late ‘90s - the Spike Jonzes and David Finchers and David O. Russells and Wes Andersons of the world - Tarantino was gone.

What was he working on? For some of his fans, anticipation for his next film soured into impatience, or even doubt. Had the guy simply climaxed with Pulp Fiction and then run out of story ideas? Was Jackie Brown a bandaid, a coverup that Tarantino didn’t have another good, original script in him? (let the record show that Jackie Brown, I think, is a great movie). 

From anticipation to impatience to doubt, those were the sentiments that preceded the release of Kill Bill: Volume 1 in 2003. 

Then the film was released, and it became immediately apparent just what Tarantino had been up to for all those years. It wasn’t simply a movie, he had crafted an epic, a universe unto himself, where he could celebrate all of the genre cinema that he had held onto so dearly his entire life. 

While the plot is a simple revenge tale - our ex-assassin protagonist, The Bride, and her unborn child are left for dead, and now she must kill her former boss, Bill - the movie serves as a playground for Tarantino. With boyish enthusiasm, he uses Kill Bill as a tour to guide us to all of his favorite cinematic play things: “Over here is the church chapel, with some Peckinpah flourishes. And here’s the hospital where Elle Driver tries to kill the comatose Bride in a kind of spooky giallo sequence. Oh! And then there’s a Japanese samurai section when the Bride wakes up and goes to Okinawa to talk Hattori Hanzo into making her a sword. I’m going to cast Sonny Chiba! And then there’s gonna be this huge Hong Kong kung fu set piece when The Bride cuts down O-ren Ishii’s Yakuza gang, the Crazy 88s. Then I’m going to end the first volume with a Lady Snowblood-style showdown between The Bride and O-Ren Ishii!” 

“...the first volume?”

“Oh yeah! There’s going to be a whole other part where the Bride goes to the American West and gets buried alive. And then she goes to China for her kung fu training with Pai Mei! Then she goes to Mexico to talk to Bill’s mentor, an old pimp, before she finds Bill for their big showdown!”

At times almost overwhelming, but undeniably infectious and fun, Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a creative outpouring from a man who wants you to see what he sees, to love what he loves.