The DVD Review 

> home | dvd reviews | dvd archive 

KILL BILL Volume One 

Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Out now to rent. 

Reviewers: Fran and Jeff  

Remarkably bloody and violent,  Kill Bill is somewhat hard to understand at first thanks to the non-chronological viewing of the story. This order may be to cater to the short attention span of its target audience. Whatever the reason, it works, grabbing you in scene one and not letting go.

The film opens with star Uma Thurman, as a mystery woman, making her way through some suburb and to the home of Vivica A. Fox. As soon as the door opens, a battle royale ensues, with high kicks, punches and blood spurting everywhere, well and truly earning the R rating.

Its not until a good halfway through the movie that we learn Thurman's character, known only as The Bride, was pregnant and about to get married when her Texas wedding was invaded by former colleagues. The Bride was once an assassin for the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and the squad's leader, Bill (the never seen only heard David Carradine), has ordered the hit on her.

Fox, playing Vernita Green, was one of her attackers. So was Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Budd (Michael Madsen) and O-Ren Ishi (Lucy Liu) and now she's out for blood. She wants to kill Bill.

There is a rather interesting anime sequence that serves as O-Ren's background story and makes a break from all the bloodshed throughout the rest of the film, this in turn, leads to the film's big, samurai sword battle between The Bride and O-Ren. This battle is also shot in an unusual way, in full black and white.

With it’s fantastic fight scenes and an impressive turn from Uma Thurman, (even if she only did half of her fight scenes, she truly is amazing) there is much to be enjoyed in Kill Bill however Tarantino’s overly tricksy approach (especially  the use of chapters to jump from one part of the story to the next without needing to use any narrative) took away from the movie and I found the fact that this is only half of the story to be really annoying and I resent the fact that, having my interest piqued, I MUST watch the next half to get the rest of the story.

Extras unpreviewed.