By Tomohiro Machiyama
 

I first saw Kill Bill a month before it opened. But what I saw was not the version that most Americans are going to see. In a screening for the Japanese media, I watched the uncut Asian version of the film, which literally wallowed in tons of blood and guts. In it, the Samurai sword-wielding Uma Thurman (as Bill's revenge-seeking heroine known only as "The Bride") cuts her enemies' heads off, butchers them limb from limb, and gouges out an eye ball. 

Even though Miramax has gone through the trouble of digitally tinting all the blood from red to black to appease the MPAA, the studio still seems worried that such violence could upset US critics. Although the screening was held in Los Angeles, no members of the American press were allowed to attend. 

Streams of blood gush out from a sword-punctured throat with an exaggerated whooshing sound. The effect is so extreme that comes off like slapstick; a gruesome pie being thrown. No wonder Miramax seems a little skittish. Kill Bill is a splatter comedy made from the wreckage of old exploitation films.

After the screening, I asked Tarantino one question about a scene where Uma flies to Tokyo via. commercial jet accompanied by her precious Samurai sword. Not only does she place it in a built-in sword holster in her seat, but other passengers have their own sword holsters as well. Why everyone had the option to bring a deadly weapon aboard? He answered, "Everyone has their own sword in the Kill Bill world! This is not the real world! Kill Bill is a fantasy built from my memories of movies I enjoyed in drive-in theaters and grind houses in the seventies!" 

By this he means Italian Spaghetti Westerns, Hong Kong kung fu pics, and Japanese Samurai and yakuza (gangster) movies. Kill Bill even begins with the company logo of Shaw Brothers, a legendary Hong Kong film studio that produced hundreds of kung fu titles. This is followed by a dedication to the memory of Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, who helmed dozens of violent gangster classics as well as the cult hit Battle Royale, and who died earlier this year. 

The majority of Americans who will see Kill Bill: Volume One at the multiplex have probably never heard of either Fukasaku or the Shaws. But this is only the beginning. References to other movies come far more direct in Kill Bill than those in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction did. The basic 
story about a bride whose groom is killed on her wedding day and who takes revenge on the assassins one-by-one is inspired by Hannie Caulder, a 1971 Spaghetti-influenced Western where Raquel Welch gets payback wearing nothing but a poncho. Tarantino's Bride is clad in the same yellow track suit that Bruce Lee wore in his swan song, Game of Death. Bill, The Bride's ex-boss and now enemy, is played by David Carradine. He has a flute with him only because he was in The Silent Flute (AKA Circle of Iron), a martial arts movie originally planned by Bruce Lee. When Japanese cult hero Sonny Chiba shows up playing a mentor of Thurman's named Hanzo, die-hard Tarantino fans are expected to hunt down copies of Chiba's old ninja TV series Hattori Hanzo: Kage no Gundan (AKA Hattori Hanzo: Shadow Soldiers). 

Don't expect much in the way of Pulp Fiction-like hip dialogue and repartee here. The addiction to remixing old material seems to have stilted whatever originality Tarantino could once have laid claim to. Chiba delivers the what may be the most memorable line in this movie: "Even if god gets in your way, kill him!" It is a quote from the late Fukasaku's film Yagyu Iichizoku No Inbo (AKA The Yagyu Conspiracy). Pretty much of the dialogue in Kill Bill: Volume One is spoken in Japanese, and sad to say, Uma's Japanese could use some work. 

In spite of her impressive physical dedication to the role, it's pretty hard to root for, or even relate, to Uma's enigmatic blood-spattered Bride. Volume One instead showers more attention and sympathy on its villain, a yakuza kingpin name O-ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). She's the only character in the film whose life story and motivations are explored in any depth (via. Japanese animation!). But even Lucy Liu's fine performance (right down to her flawless Japanese) is dominated by an antecedent, this time derived from Lady Snowblood, a character from yet another seventies Japanese vengeance film. 

Kill Bill is Tarantino's labor of love, but sometimes it gets too insular for even the most rabid of followers. For example, every time Thurman goes into a rage, Quincy Jones' theme from IRONSIDES fires up on the soundtrack. For Tarantino, this is the same music cue pilfered for the Shaw Brothers film Five Fingers of Death. But for most, it will simply conjure up anomalous memories of Raymond Burr in a wheelchair. 

Compared to his last film Jackie Brown, which was a challenging adult character study in the Douglas Sirk style, Tarantino seems to have retreated to an adolescent state of self pleasuring. Compared to Pulp Fiction, which managed to shape old material into new cinema forms, he's faithfully devoted himself to recreating scenes from his favorite trash films frame-by-frame. Yes, Kill Bill is a bad movie, but that's the point: to honor disreputable trash films, not redeem them. In some ways, it's quite cozy to be invited into Tarantino bootleg video cluttered pad and to be able to brose through his world-class collection. But then again, if you don't go in for terminally geeky friendships, Kill Bill may not be the movie for you.   

 
-Go to Tarantino interview
-Go to David Carradine interview
-Go to Lawrence Bender interview