MOVIE REVIEW Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' is bloody and brilliant

The ultraviolent film pays homage to Asian martial arts movies.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Remember the scene in "Pulp Fiction" where John Travolta plunged a hypodermic needle into Uma Thurman's heart to revive her after she overdosed?
Well, multiply the shock value of that jaw-dropping moment a hundred times and you still won't come anywhere near the sheer visceral impact of "Kill Bill, Volume 1."
The first film from "Fiction"/"Reservoir Dogs" indie poster boy Quentin Tarantino since 1997's scrumptious blaxploitation homage "Jackie Brown," "Bill 1" is a virtuoso display of craftsmanship that's destined to divide critics -- and audiences -- like no other movie in recent memory. "Seabiscuit" fans are advised to sit this one out.
Former video store clerk Tarantino, one of the most extravagantly and instinctively gifted filmmakers to come down the pike since Orson Welles, proves that a six-year layoff hasn't diminished his directing skills.
In fact, this is probably the most stunningly accomplished work of his still-young career.
And, considering that it's only half of his fourth film (in a virtually unprecedented move, Miramax has decided to split "Kill Bill" into two parts, releasing them as separate movies), one can only imagine what wonders await us when "Volume 2" arrives on Feb. 20.
It's brutal
Still, I've got a hunch that mainstream moviegoers won't embrace the blood-soaked bravura of "Bill 1" with nearly as much bemused affection as I did.
How Tarantino managed to slip this past the MPAA without an NC-17 rating is as vast and impenetrable a mystery as Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Egypt.
Is "Bill 1" the most violent movie ever made? Probably not.
It is, however, the most brutally nihilistic movie to ever receive a wide U.S. theatrical release. Compared with Tarantino's howlingly gruesome magnum opus, previous benchmarks in wanton celluloid destruction like "The Wild Bunch," "A Clockwork Orange" (which "Bill" wittily references), and "Natural Born Killers" (co-written by Tarantino) look positively demure.
The only time Tarantino shows any restraint is during a climactic battle when he segues from color to black-and-white, "Taxi Driver"-style, probably in an attempt to disguise some of the gore. (More than 100 gallons of prop blood were used in this sequence alone.)
Intended as Tarantino's valentine to the Asian martial arts movies he adored as a kid -- and apparently still does as an Oscar-winning adult -- "Bill" is literally and lovingly stitched together from bits and pieces of that proudly disreputable genre's most notorious films.
The plot
The story is fairly straightforward.
Four years and six months after her entire wedding party was blown to smithereens by members of The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad -- an organization to which she once belonged -- on the orders of former boss Bill (David Carradine), the Bride (Uma Thurman) awakens from a coma in an El Paso hospital.
Promptly making a list and checking it, well, once, she steals a canary-yellow van from a perverted orderly and hightails it to Pasadena, Calif.
First up on the Bride's revenge itinerary is former colleague Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) whose 4-year-old daughter walks in on them during the middle of some strenuous kung-foolery. At that point, some viewers will no doubt already be heading for the exit.
Next up is O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), whose entire backstory -- how she became Hong Kong's deadliest crime boss -- is told entirely through some ingenious anime created by Japan's Production I.G. Studio.
Then it's off to Tokyo, where the Bride plans to use a new samurai sword on O-Ren. Their paths finally converge at the House of Blue Leaves, where "Bill 1"'s suitably apocalyptic 20-minute finale occurs.
After dispensing with O-Ren's entourage, including lethal schoolgirl-uniformed Gogo whose preferred armament is a blade-adorned ball-and-chain (see "Master of the Flying Guillotine"), the Bride is momentarily startled when dozens of O-Ren's yakuza enforcers show up. Saving the best for last, Tarantino pits the Bride and O-Ren in a duel-to-the-death. The setting for the carnage? An elegant Japanese garden during a late-night snowfall.
Stylish direction
Why do I think that "Kill Bill, Volume 1" rocks like no other movie released so far this year?
It's spectacularly entertaining, directed with a sense of style so ridiculously over-the-top that it feels just about perfect. Because Tarantino's cool-cat hipster attitude is so exhilarating, the violence feels less appalling than enthralling.
Tarantino wisely abstains from by-now rote digital effects, although his madcap fight choreography -- supervised by Yuen Wo-ping of "Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" fame -- does make generous use of wirework.
In the process, he may very well have invented an entirely new cinematic grammar for future Hollywood action movies.
If "Kill Bill, Volume 2" delivers on the promise of "Volume 1," Tarantino's magnum opus is destined to go down as an all-time flash-trash classic. Elevating grind house splatter flicks to high art just might be the most subversive act of this geek-savant's career.