Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)

In mining for films to review, I've been digging back into movies that I love but haven't seen in a while. Quentin Tarantino's fourth film, the first volume of his Kill Bill revenge epic, fell squarely in that category, so I felt it needed to be viewed again.

I'm almost sorry I did that. KB1 is not as good as I remember it being. Though it's still rip-roaring good fun, it's not exactly high cinema. Is there anything wrong with that? Not really... but this is one of those postmodernist moments where the simulation - my memory of the film - is better than the actual thing.

What I loved about the movie - and still do - is its unique structure, which divides the story into ten nonchronological chapters over two movies. The basic throughline of the movie is the story of The Bride's quest for revenge against her assassin cohorts who tried to kill her when she left their organization. The Bride (Uma Thurman) has five names on her list, and in the first volume she gets to two of them - O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox).

It's tricky to review Vol. 1 without acknowledging Vol. 2, so at least some comparisons are necessary. Vol. 1 is a lot more action-packed and a lot more colorful than its successor, but I'm not sure that makes it a great movie. It's a lot of fun, for sure; the action scenes, incredibly violent though they are, are rousing at a visceral level, instilling "Ew" and "Ah" at all the right moments, even on subsequent viewings. The direction, despite being lifted as "homages" to other works, is visually stimulating, with angles conveying more at times than the performances.

Of course, this being a Tarantino movie, we expect two things: a powerhouse of a soundtrack and snarky dialogue that predates Diablo Cody by more than a decade. On the first count, Vol. 1 delivers in a big way; the songs Tarantino chooses fit perfectly with the scenes on screen, but at times it seems like too much of a good thing, at times overtly showy. Then again, this is the film that introduced "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" and "Woo Hoo" to American listeners, so it's certainly not all bad.

As for the dialogue, I used to love its snappiness. Now I look at Vol. 1 and realize just how uneven it is. The Bride (whose name is cleverly never mentioned in the first film, although you can see it if you freeze-frame her plane ticket) alternates between intellectualism and street speak, sometimes distractingly so within the same scene. Though the writing is clever and well-organized, it's this dialectic disparity (which fortunately seems rectified in the second installment) that hurts the overall authorial reputation Tarantino earned from the likes of Pulp Fiction.

I suppose I would like Vol. 1 more if it were coupled with Vol. 2 in one movie-going experience; that would probably launch into great movie status, since a four-hour movie wouldn't be as easily dwarfed by these shortcomings. The thing is, I don't believe Tarantino set out to make an enduring classic of cinema. I believe he wanted to make his own movie that captured all the fun and excitement of the campy flicks he grew up with. And in that endeavor, he succeded. "A roaring rampage of revenge," the film describes itself. Oh, it roars, and it rampages, and it leaves the audience slightly breathless.

Perfect it isn't, but bloody satisfying? You betcha, kiddo.