Kill Bill, Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
Volume 1 of Quentin Tarantino’s bisected Kill Bill is at once less than I hoped, and better than I feared. Tarantino’s first three full-length films – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown – were amongst the best films of the last decade, but the possibility loomed that Kill Bill would favour all his worst instincts. Tarantino’s stated intent was a large-scale tribute to Asian exploitation movies, and the danger with such a project was that it would leach the substance from his work and leave only the sensationalism. After all, there was the clear precedent of his 1996 collaboration with Robert Rodriguez, From Dusk Till Dawn. That film was a tribute to lurid horror movies, and while cleverly done, it’s also a rather unpleasant and barren film. I feared Kill Bill would follow that pattern.