Kill Bill

This is unlike any movie you’ve ever seen. It may remind you a little of Pulp Fiction, but it’s just a twinge of a memory. It will nag you through the whole movie what this spectacle reminds you of. You won’t realize what it is until the end, as you sit through all the credits hoping for a Matrix Reloaded-like preview of the next film. It never came.

Sorry… let’s talk about the flick why don’t we? But first, let me say that I’m an unapologetic Tarantino fan. I love Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs. I even liked Four Rooms. So, this is a fan’s review. I’m not impartial. I went into this expecting to love the movie, and I was no disappointed. I loved it. It was awesome. It was the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in a long time.

The action is intense, slightly cartoony (which I’ll explain later), and a lot of fun. Uma Thurman pulls off her best performance ever… ever. Everyone else is solid, especially Lucy Liu, who chews up the scenes she’s in with a lot of power, but with a very real sense of grace and lightness.

A couple warnings… this is the bloodiest, most gruesome action movie I’ve ever seen. I don’t watch slasher flicks, but I’ll bet it outdoes some of them for the number of limbs violently removed and the gallons of blood sprayed per character. Even so, most of the blood feels cartoonish, and there are only a couple real cringe-worthy moments.

Let’s talk about music… it rocks. All of Tarantiino’s movies have great music, and this movie is no different. There was only one place I wanted a song to go on longer than it did – that killer horn riff song from the trailer. It’s a great track, but it’s only in the movie for a minunte or so. Still, the rest of the music is great, and fits the scenes perfectly.

Now, where have I seen this before? While I loved the movie, it felt very familiar. I realized near the end that it’s really a live-action anime. Behind the great acting, great production values and fight scenes, it’s anime. The spurting blood, crazy action, and forceful amputations are all nods to anime. This isn’t bad… it’s good. It’s great. I think more anime should be retold to American audiences. A live-action Akira rewritten by an American screenwriter with Hollywood stars? Awesome. Yeah, it would rule.

Go see Kill Bill… go see it today. Movies like this deserve to be successful so they’ll make more like ’em.