MasterChugs Theater: 'Kill Bill Volume 1'

Note: MasterChugs Theater is a new weekly feature which will be appearing Friday afternoons (yes, we know it's Thursday). Movie nut Chugs Taylor will pull one random cinema choice from his vault and review it.

Take a trip back to 2003. What happens to a cinema geek like Quentin Tarantino when he's away from directing for six years? What happens to a guy who is full of wiry, jittery love of filmmaking on the slowest of days? It's like a high school physics experiment--he builds up kinetic energy until he finally vomits it out into a movie in the form of ball-clutching action, reverent reference and homage and culture shifting cool. Oh, and there's bloody revenge, spaghetti westerns, wuxia and plenty of giallo. Quentin calls it Kill Bill, Volume 1. We call it "friggin' awesome, MAN!"

It will no doubt exasperate some that, somehow, after all that time-first he was a rock-star director with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, then an annoying chatterbox acting too often in sub-par movies, then a grown-up filmmaker with his wonderful Jackie Brown, we again think, "how lucky for Tarantino. Look what this kid gets to make." One change: he's not a kid anymore. But Kill Bill's borderline recklessness in terms of super-stylized B-movie elements, grind-house pastiche, purposeful artifice, and virtuoso musical moments all make us believe a freaky little whippersnapper's behind the camera. Detractors will find it adolescent, fans will fall for his geeky love, and others will simply be wowed. Not only is this a stim-boost for Tarantino, it's a much needed slap in the face for lethargic, seen-it-all movie audiences. Uma Thurman chopping off a guy's head with a samurai sword? Hell yeah, we'll watch that.

An absolutely remarkable Thurman (this is easily the best role in her career) plays an ex-assassin, simply called "The Bride," a.k.a. Black Mamba, who wakes up after a four-year coma feeling plenty angry. Shot and left for dead at her El Paso wedding (shotgun wedding has no need to be used here), she opens her eyes and finds out that she has a metal plate in her head, her body has been debased and death is looming over her. All we know is that Bill (the now properly Tarantino'ed ((see: John Travolta's career after Pulp Fiction)) David Carradine, whose face we never see) led the vicious crime perpetrated by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS), a group the Bride used to belong to. Alone, devastated, and filled with rage, the Bride searchs for vengeance, plain and simple. Then, in an elaborate act of cinematic contortionism, we follow right along with her.

And what we see is violent. Oh, how it is delightfully and gleefully violent, along with being grayscale, Technicolor, chronologically reversed and animated. The animated part (done by GONZO animation) to me is such a perfect companion to the film and something that keeps the audience on their toes. While the actual animation (which is personally reminiscient of Waking Life mixed with Ninja Scroll) isn't the best ever burned to film, it's so evocative and distinctive that it doesn't matter. Some of my favorite scenes in the film happen during that sequence, particularly the spot where Lucy Liu's character is on the roof sniping at the motorcade. Utterly phenomenal stuff.

This should have been the most self conscious Tarantino film considering what he aimed to achieve, but to me it seems his most mature and confident as a filmmaker. Where are the long, pop-culture-drenched Samuel L. Jackson speeches? Where's the discussion about just how much one is obligated to tip a waiter? Where's the inadvertent reference to Foxy Brown? You're not going to find them here, only visual and aural references that intertwine brilliantly with Tarantino's mis-en-scene. From Nancy Sinatra opening the proceedings with her haunting "Bang Bang" to Quincy Jones' funky and bizarre theme song from the TV show Ironside to riffs ranging from blaxploitation to Bernard Hermann to Ennio Moriconne, Tarantino fills the picture with haunting music to match his dazzling images. And you'll see cameos of The Green Hornet, Kinji Fukasaku (he even lifts one of Fukasaku's young actresses from Battle Royale, Chiaki Kuriyama, to use as Liu's schoolgirl bodyguard), Bruce Lee (Uma's yellow tracksuit apes Lee's in Game of Death), samurai sword epics, Sergio Leone-the list goes on. Dear Lord, Tarantino even uses the music of Zamfir and his pan flute. And it's haltingly moving. What kind of crazy voodoo is this? For the director and his movie-obsessed audience, it's a beautiful, brilliant, bloody valentine.

There's this endless dispute that runs among people about "popcorn movies" and more "serious" movies--Kill Bill Volume 1 is like the pure synthesis of them. You can watch this movie and just lose yourself in the action and the shots and the fun and not feel like you've lost some IQ points in the process. It's just engaging, fun and utterly kick-ass. If you like action movies, you owe it to yourself to own this movie and its second volume, or at the very least, rent it.

Two thumbs, four A+'s, and a fist pump into the air up