KILL BILL VOL. 1 - REVIEW


Ah Kill Bill, I remember seeing Quentin Tarantino's 4th film at the cinema and having THE best time. This was like watching a compilation of badass revenge movies from the 70's all put together into a fresh, new, exciting, unique package. I hadn't seen anything quite like it and it blew me away.

Uma Thurman gives a career-best performance as The Bride, a woman betrayed by her own buddies, namely the "Deadly Viper Assassination Squad" and its leader only known to us as "Bill", and left for dead. But a gunshot to the head just wasn't enough to keep her down and super-Uma is soon back and ready to kick ass. We follow her journey from when she wakes up from a long coma to her confrontation with Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii. It's typical revenge movie stuff and it all builds up to a thrilling final fight where the as-yet-unnamed Bride takes on The Crazy 88, easily one of the most useless gangs in movie history. By the end you're so into the Lucy Liu part of the plot you almost forget about Michael Madsen and the rest of Uma's targets, all kept nice and relatively quiet until Volume 2.

And as good as the second part of the story was, Volume 1 is where it's at.

Tarantino has one hell of a time here and it shows.

You've got a kitchen fight early on which boasts brilliant timing, an entirely animated, particularly bloody sequence, slashed limbs all over the place, a nutty schoolgirl swinging a big, giant, pointy ball, a Hattori Hanzo sword, an eye-patched Daryl Hannah and... a Pussy Wagon. Basically everything you could ever need. Kill Bill is a stylish, clever, very funny, very cool melting pot of all things good and revenge-ey (new word): cartoonish, mischievous, completely entertaining, inspired, this is one beat-'em-up you'll want to check out for sure.

It helps if you've seen a crazy amount of samurai/kung fu movies and westerns but regardless, you'd have to be pretty moody to spit on this one. Kill Bill goes for pure, mindless popcorn entertainment with a touch of class and a sprinkle of gore and it does just that, very well indeed.

Killer flick.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT - REVIEW

Image
Finally free from the clutches of the iconic Original Series , Picard and co. finally got their own movie to play with and delivered this much better, much darker, much less gimmicky outing. This time, we're introduced to the Borgs, a race of soulless, zombie-like drones capable of assimilating people completely. A popular race of bad guys in the series, their Hellraiser -style S&M look certainly begged for a movie! First Contact opens with Picard having a nightmare about the time he almost became a Borg forever and little by little, as the current Borg threat increases, he starts to crack up, feeling a responsibility to sort that problem out himself as he still has a slight connection to them but also wanting a kind of revenge, closure if you will, for what they did to him the first time around. The plot sees the crew of the Enterprise witness the Earth get completely assimilated by the Borgs so they go back in time before Earth made its "first contact" with al
Read more

24: SEASON 1 - REVIEW

Image
I know, I'm like 100 years late. But I'm The "Retro" Critic! :P I remember catching a glimpse of this iconic show back in the day and actually finding it pretty entertaining. Sadly, I hadn't followed the thread from the very beginning so it felt like catching the season about halfway through would be a bit of a waste. I decided to wait until I could check it out on DVD. 10 years later... Well I finally made it, that's the main thing, right? So was it worth the wait? What do I make of this very first season? It's good. I thought it would be quite good and it was. Basically I'm rarely taken by a cop-themed series unless you've got a mad scientist in there ( Fringe ), evil twins ( Alias ) or... Columbo ( Columbo ). But 24 did a hell of a good job keeping me entertained throughout and making me care about MOST of what was going on. Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer is a hard one to dislike and is pretty much the glue holding the whole sho
Read more

THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL - REVIEW

Image
 Looks like every Broadway comedy musical these days is trying to be The Producers ... Mel Brooks' hugely successful show now being the basic template for shows based on movies (with the exception of the admittedly *ahem* unique Spiderman musical), after Dirty Rotten Scoundrels we're treated to Broadway's The Addams Family. An odd release but probably an inevitable one. Not based on any of the movies, the story actually follows up from past adaptations and sees a now grown-up Wednesday falling in love with a "normal" dude and having to face her unconventional family. It's essentially Addams Family Values with Wednesday taking on the Fester role. A good idea which should please both fans of the films and those looking to see something new. But what works for The Producers just doesn't work for everything. Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams? So much for the tall, suave, maniacal Gomez we all know and love! Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane but list
Read more