Maybe it's Uma Thurman. The much maligned, gaunt blond actress of "Pulp Fiction" fame and "Batman and Robin" shame turns in the best performance of her life as a far more convincing action star than Keanu Reeves. Maybe it was the soundtrack, which thumped and throbbed with '70s takes on kung-fu showdown music. But it was probably the stylish, meticulous and dexterous hand of writer and director Quentin Tarantino, who has made a simple revenge flick into an instant classic using a combination of staggering camera work (a staple of '70s and '80s kung-fu film homages) a brutal and jaw dropping anime sequence and 450 gallons of fake blood.
"Kill Bill Vol. 1" tells the story of The Bride (Uma Thurman), waking up from a four-year coma and beginning a quest to take revenge on the five people who ambushed her wedding and killed nearly everybody present. Those people are O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), the queen of the Japanese underground, Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), an eye-patch-sporting blond bombshell, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), a suburban mom looking to escape her past, Budd (Michael Madsen) and Bill (David Carradine), neither of whom get much screen time in this first installment. Along with The Bride, this motley group makes up the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, an elite team of fighters who apparently didn't take The Bride's exit from their crew very well.
As in other Tarantino films, this movie does not unfold chronologically, but instead, after a chilling opening black-and-white sequence, zooms straight to the end of the movie, where The Bride fights Vernita to the death in her quaint, pastel-painted home. The film then takes us back to The Bride coming out of her coma six months before the Vernita encounter, fighting off two would-be rapists despite not being able to use her atrophied legs, and making her way to Okinawa to acquire a sword and train for her quest for revenge.
In Japan, Thurman hunts down O-Ren and her "Crazy 88" fighters for a 30-minute epic battle, which culminates in a snowy Japanese garden of soft, sensual beauty. Along the way, she encounters such memorable characters as Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), a retired metalwork master and Go-Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama), a sexy, sadistic bodyguard.
The real star of the film, however, is Tarantino's brilliant direction. If he skimped on the dialogue and plot (which he certainly did), then he made up for it with a delicious style, which utilizes black and white film, shadow sequences and glass floors to make one of the most astounding visual works in recent memory. The blood, which flows by the bucket and spurts like a sprinkler, competes with dozens of severed, twitching limbs for screen time in the climactic fight scene. The choreography is seamless and holds on to a certain skewed realism that often gets lost when actors are hooked to wires (as Thurman and company apparently were for much of the movie).
The heavy layering of camp, ranging from Thurman's stolen vehicle emblazoned with "Pussy Wagon" to Liu's decapitation of a rival warlord, adds the necessary comedy to a movie that pays its big dividends in violence.
The fight scenes, described by many as "stylized," are nonetheless violent and gory and not for the weak of heart or stomach. However, Tarantino's pacing is so flawless that if you don't love one scene, you'll probably like the next one.
Critics of "Kill Bill Vol. 1" will say that Tarantino has strayed too far from his earlier style of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction," and that his new movie lacks the sharp dialogue and carefully woven story lines of its predecessors. I would argue that Tarantino has created a movie so dense with visual brilliance and stylistic nuance that there was little room for snappy dialogue or a complex plot.
It has been six years since Tarantino made his last film, the disappointing "Jackie Brown." As I left the theater I wondered how just over half-a-decade was enough time to accomplish all he did in "Kill Bill Vol. 1."