Kill Bill stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, a former assassin who swears revenge on a team of assassins & their leader, Bill, after they try to kill her & her unborn child. The story is divided into two films, Vol. 1 (2003) & Vol. 2 (2004) - both written & directed by Quentin Tarantino. This will mainly be a review of Vol 1, but I left a small section at the end where I briefly discuss my thoughts on Vol 2 without mentioning spoilers for either film.⚔️
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Kill Bill Vol 1 is an exciting, thrilling ride from start to finish as we follow the mysterious Bride & her quest for revenge. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I’m not going to pretend like I know anything about the martial arts movies Tarantino pays homage to in Kill Bill, I haven’t seen a single one of the genre yet, but to me it felt like QT took everything he loved from those films & perfectly paid homage to them & adapted it for Western audiences or those that are unfamiliar with the genre (like me) by Americanizing it & adding his signature touches & trademarks without butchering or mocking the films he was inspired by; simultaneously, he didn’t let any of that stop him from going all out on this film in every aspect, from the most unashamedly violent & bloodiest action to the highly stylized storytelling of the film. It's as if Tarantino added any stylistic device he could think of when writing the script or in the editing room, & surprisingly, it works… really well. It shouldn't, but it does - I think if many other directors attempted it they wouldn’t have pulled it off the way he did; it helps that Kill Bill has a simple premise to follow (something I appreciate & give bonus points to in any action film) while remaining extremely exciting - aided by the heavy stylization.
The 10-minute anime sequence on its own could be taken out & released on its own as a short film & it would still be excellent, worthy of all the praise, & be a lesson in filmmaking in itself, which speaks for how remarkable the rest of the film is
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You don’t get bored for a single second while watching The Bride kick butt in a thousand ways that would guarantee she’d win a fight against any male action hero, & she does that as a kind of anti-hero. She's definitely among my favorite Tarantino characters, yet I still can’t help but have a bit of mixed feelings about The Bride’s character.
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By giving her the story of being a mother whose child is taken away from her, we don’t REALLY need to know much more about her intentions in the film - that is definitely reason enough for her to seek revenge & for us to sympathize with & root for her... & while I really like the simplicity of that & the theme of revenge, I felt like I still needed to know a bit more about her, especially when her antagonist in the film has a fleshed out, brilliant backstory, one we can more easily connect with, while The Bride is left with close to nothing. And based on what I know & have seen, Tarantino isn’t the type of director who’s philosophical & deep & would write her in such a way so we’re left to question ourselves, our experience or our morality, even while making her such an interesting anti-hero to follow…
That leads to my thoughts on Volume 2... After the extremely fast, action-packed pace of Vol 1, Volume 2 felt a bit odd. The pace is slower, the film drags on & takes its time, there are unnecessary detours that easily could’ve been edited out of the story for it to be more streamlined…whereas in Vol. 1 it felt like we barely had time to catch our breath from all the action. But most importantly, I was liked how the story ended overall & I was quite satisfied with it. It occurred to me later that I might’ve liked the whole thing even more if it were one 3 hour movie rather than two 2-hour long films… Or if Vol. 2 followed a grown-up Nikki...
At the end of the day though, I can’t say I didn’t love or thoroughly enjoy Kill Bill. I understand the praise it receives & definitely think it’s worthy of it. It’s a great film, one I consider a must-watch, & one of my absolute favorites among Tarantino’s filmography, with incredible action, cinematography, & direction. I know I’ll definitely revisit it many more times in the future.
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Rating: 9/10⭐️