[REVIEW] Kill Bill, Volume 1
Apr. 22nd, 2004 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldLast night, I watched Kill Bill, Volume 1 again, on DVD with my friend C. from across the hall.
I still liked it, just as I did the first time I saw it this previous winter. I liked the acting; I liked the direction; I liked the action; I even, God help me, liked the dialogue. (Tarantino purposely made use of somewhat heavy and leaden dialogue to heighten the effect of the film's unreality on the audience, to impress on his viewers the ways in which the plot both mattered and didn't matter.) The final duel between Black Mamba and O-Ren Ishii was particularly effective.
The thing that impressed me most about the film, though, was the way in which a coherent moral universe was depicted as existing. The world of Kill Bill is certainly violent. This violence, though, is carefully controlled, is understood as having consequences for the victims and the victimizers, and the obligations it places on the behaviour of all involved are generally recognized in a way that's refreshing for an action film.
I'm going to have to see Volume 2.
I still liked it, just as I did the first time I saw it this previous winter. I liked the acting; I liked the direction; I liked the action; I even, God help me, liked the dialogue. (Tarantino purposely made use of somewhat heavy and leaden dialogue to heighten the effect of the film's unreality on the audience, to impress on his viewers the ways in which the plot both mattered and didn't matter.) The final duel between Black Mamba and O-Ren Ishii was particularly effective.
The thing that impressed me most about the film, though, was the way in which a coherent moral universe was depicted as existing. The world of Kill Bill is certainly violent. This violence, though, is carefully controlled, is understood as having consequences for the victims and the victimizers, and the obligations it places on the behaviour of all involved are generally recognized in a way that's refreshing for an action film.
I'm going to have to see Volume 2.
