Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

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Uma Thurman stars as an assassin doling out hot vengeance on the colleagues who betrayed her when she tried to come clean and start a peaceful, civilian lifestyle. After being shot in the head and losing her unborn child during a wedding rehearsal, Thurman’s character spends four years in a coma before waking up and creating a five-person kill list. Volume 1 of the story, co-conceived by Thurman and writer-director Quentin Tarantino, sees Thurman’s ‘The Bride’ character hunt down and extinguish two members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad played by Vivica A. Fox and Lucy Liu.

Kill Bill is less grounded in reality than Tarantino’s previous work. It’s a comic book movie, really — the director’s homage to ’60s and ’70s martial arts movies, simultaneously silly and cool. I prefer his more serious work with characters more deeply developed, but Kill Bill is still a lot of fun and a celebration of cinematic technique.

The entire cast is having a blast chewing up the scenery in operatic fashion. Vivica A. Fox gives a thrilling, energetic performance in the film’s first double-assassin combat, while Lucy Liu gives a calculated, icy cool delivery for the film’s climax. Liu commands the screen, conveying considerable power with stillness and simple eye movements. I also had a lot of fun seeing how Tarantino marries vintage music to new visuals, a trademark of his work. Daryl Hannah’s introduction to an eerie whistling ditty (from the 1968 film Twisted Nerve) is among my favorite musical moments.

An early highlight is the backstory of Lucy Liu’s character, where Tarantino switches from live-action to Japanese anime to show us Liu’s character as a little girl observing the violent murder of her parents. The film’s prolonged final fight sequence is the film’s major set-piece, plunging Thurman’s character into a fight with nearly a hundred of Lucy Liu’s hench-people at a posh Japanese restaurant. Chiaki Kuriyama is memorable as Gogo, Liu’s youngest and most ruthless acolyte who dresses like a Catholic school girl and kills with a ball and chain.

With Michael Madsen, Michael Parks, Sonny Chiba, and David Carradine.