Product details: - Product group: Video
- Edition: VHS Tape
- Publisher: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm
- Format: PAL
- Release Date: 2004-04-19
- Number of discs: 1
- Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Lucy Liu
- Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
- Run Time: 111 minutes
- Studio: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm
- Manufacturer: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainm
- Package Dimensions: 7.32 x 51 x 75 inches
Proudly billed as "the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino", Kill Bill, Volume 1 is actually half of it (if you include his chunk of Four Rooms it's really the fourth and a quarterth). If Jackie Brown achieved a certain maturity beyond callous cool, then this is his Mr Hyde's trash picture, which relishes all the things in cinema that are supposed to be bad for you. The opening Shaw Brothers logo and cheesy "our feature presentation" card, redolent of rancid Kia-Ora and stale Wrestlers, sets this up as defiantly a movie-geek's movie, whose touchstones are spaghetti Westerns, comic books, kung fu/samurai quickies and second-hand vinyl albums. If Kill Bill was a dog-eared paperback, it'd be confiscated by a teacher. Tarantino's favoured flashback-and-forth structure means we begin with a shuffle between past and present as the Bride with No Name (Uma Thurman) is shown being apparently murdered at the climax of a Texas wedding chapel massacre and alive again tracking down the second person on her to-kill list. The bulk of the film takes place between these plot points as the Bride carries a vengeance feud to the first of her enemies, yakuza queenpin O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). Like its soundtrack--everything from Nancy Sinatra to the RZA, with the Green Hornet theme along the way--it's an eclectic picture, with sequences done as a gruesome anime, particularly genocidal stretches in black and white, and segues from cheerful kung fu massacre to Kurosawa-look poised duelling. Tarantino holds back on his trademark motormouth pop culture references; in fact, much of the film is in sub-titled Japanese. You have to lock your brain into trash-film mode to get the most out of it, but its cliffhanger fade-out--unlike the dispiriting "to be continued" at the end of Matrix Reloaded--makes you want to come back. It's not a spoiler to reveal that Bill (a barely glimpsed David Carradine) hasn't been killed yet, and Thurman needs to take out Daryl Hannah and Michael Madsen before she gets to him. --Kim Newman
Customer reviews:  ......" That woman deserves her revenge and we deserve to die "......, 2009-09-10
Uma Thurman plays an assassin known only as the Bride, who after being left for dead on her wedding day, leads a miraculous recovery. Consequently she begins to plot her revenge - `samurai' style.
Kill Bill is Tarantino's tribute to Eastern martial arts films and more noticeably to Bruce Lee. Viewers can expect an ultra-violent, colourful and well choreographed revenge movie. It's also an enjoyable film, sometimes outrageous and defying logic; but that is expected of a `chopsocky' flick. Since when have they allowed samurai swords as hand luggage on planes, and how is it possible to survive being shot in the face without any facial defects! Thurman herself is convincing in the lead role, delivering her dialogue successfully with minimum effort, but full of emotion.
Kill Bill functions well as a homage, as QT finds the right balance of presenting a film which is a semi-spoof, but without being condescending. It actually positively promotes the genre to a wider audience. It was also a good decision to split Kill Bill in two parts, as the second film will be the western, ensuring both genres are dealt with separately.
We don't get the QT dialogue we have come to expect of him as this is deliberately left out to make way for the perfectly executed set pieces. Such a decision results in Kill Bill not coming across as a Tarantino film, and probably the only QT film not to do so.
Nevertheless, Kill Bill is ultimately an action film and nothing else, and this is how it should be perceived. As an action film it's probably one of the best to come out in the noughties. It's a martial arts film with added urban cool; giving it an edge over many other films under the same category. It also proves that everything Tarantino carries out is fresh and innovative (even where he borrows and makes references to other genres) and QT will not make films - for the sake of making films.
 Good, 2009-09-08
Amazing film, but don't understand how Uma Thurman is not left disfigured by being shot in the face
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