Wednesday, October 22, 2003

So. I saw Kill Bill on Saturday.

I really enjoyed it, though it’s certainly not for everyone. It’s hyper-violent in a way that parodies violent films. It’s a hyper-violent kung fu film that actually has the budget to pull off the hyperviolence that this sort of film usually doesn’t have the money to portray.

It’s basically a set of fight sequences, strung together with a clouded backstory of revenge. It’s a very cool series of fight sequences, too, since they were choreographed by Yuen Wu-Ping, the legend of kung fu fight sequence choreography. There’s a fabulous energy to the fights, but thanks to Wu-Ping‘s and Tarantino’s use of film, it’s all perfectly comprehensible.

Uma Thurman is fantastic. Heck, everybody is fantastic. Nobody pulls the film down.

That said, the film tends to drag a bit. As I stood in the theater lobby afterwards talking to a friend, I commented that this felt like an hour-and-a-half film told in two hours and twenty minutes. There’s lots of unnecessary backstory in there, including the anime sequence.

Oh yes…there’s an anime sequence. It’s beautiful in a hyper-violent, ridiculously bloody and disturbing way. But it’s essentially a story of one villain’s childhood. I didn’t care. It was interesting, but it was extra information that didn’t push the film along at all. If it had involved the protagonist, that might’ve been interesting. Instead, it pretty much established the following facts: she had a sucky, violent childhood. Um. Okay. It felt like fanfic.

On the other hand, it’s beautiful fanfic, and all of the film is over-the-top and rather pointless. It’s a revenge fantasy, after all. The plot is very much secondary to watching Uma Thurman take out eighty sword-wielding bad guys who wear Kato masks.

In other news…new poll. And I’ve been tweaking the layout of these pages a bit, mainly for variety. What do you think?