Apr
12
“Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” Review
Filed Under Movies
The New Bev screened the 247-minute cut of Quentin Tarantino’s revenge epic, “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair,” at the end of March. The film proved so popular, it was held over for another week at the beginning of April. Things have been kind of hectic for me lately, so this review’s being published a little later than I’d originally intended
This version of the film is what screened at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, complete with distracting subtitles. Why it was never released in full is puzzling, but there you go. I refuse to buy the two volumes on DVD because they’re barebones discs, and whenever I end up buying a barebones disc, a double-dip is announced within a month.
And so, I was excited to see “The Whole Bloody Affair.” It’d been seven years since I’d seen either film, and the New Bev is a great venue that I don’t make it out to often enough.
How does “Kill Bill” hold up? Well, it was never my favorite of QT’s films. As two volumes, released six months apart in late-2003 and early-2004, the original releases had a sense of incompleteness to them, despite being so overstuffed. Put back together, the experience now feels dreadfully overlong. It clocks in at over four hours. It’s nine minutes shorter than “Lawrence of Arabia” if that gives you some idea of how gargantuan* this thing is.
Worse, the movie doesn’t begin with my favorite title card in history: “‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ -Old Klingon Proverb.” How could they leave that out? I was also expecting this cut to have the street fight between Bill (David Carradine) and Michael Jai White. Carradine talks about it in his book, “The Kill Bill Diary,” which I bought from the man himself a few years ago at a comic book convention. Disappointingly, the scene isn’t in either of the two volumes of the film that I saw during their theatrical run, and it ain’t in “The Whole Bloody Affair.” What gives?
“Kill Bill” is a revenge flick about The Bride (aka Black Mamba, aka Beatrix Kiddo), played by Uma Thurman. After being shot in the head during her wedding rehearsal by her mentor and former lover Bill, The Bride awakens from a coma four years later; she was in a delicate condition when she was gunned down and believes her unborn baby to have died along with her would-be husband and their wedding guests. What follows is an exploitation epic like no other, blending dozens of genres and styles, eschewing traditional linear storytelling and ultimately stopping dead before its talky and anti-climactic finale. The film, I’d argue, is simply too much of a good thing.
Tarantino’s gift for excess is what makes him an exciting filmmaker, but there isn’t enough story in “Kill Bill” to justify its running time. As the narrative leapfrogs from one stylistically different chapter to the next, the film feels like it’s starting over rather than building towards a conclusion. Yes, the Anime segment about O-Ren Ishii is an interesting addition, but ultimately becomes exhausting and unnecessary. Why is so much attention devoted to one of Bill’s henchmen? It takes the focus away from The Bride, who ultimately feels underdeveloped despite the film’s considerable length.
One thing that also struck me while watching the film again is that we never see a scene where the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad acts as a cohesive unit. We never get a sense of how the team functioned before The Bride walked away from the life of a contract killer. It’s kind of amazing how that was left out, considering how much attention is paid to other minutiae. I think establishing The Bride’s relationships and/or rivalries with her team members would’ve lent some real gravity to her revenge mission. Instead, each body she stacks up carries with it the dramatic heft of defeating a video game end boss before advancing to the next level.
“Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” might not top-tier Tarantino in my estimation, but it’s still quite a theatrical experience. Stacked against some of his stronger efforts, the film feels like a minor work. Even so, it’s at times a thrilling piece of martial arts cinema. It might not be everything one would want out of a filmmaker as promising as Tarantino, and yet even when he falls short, he’s still firing on more cylinders than his contemporaries.
-Brad Lohan
*”You know, I’ve always liked that word…’gargantuan’… so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence.” -Elle Driver (aka California Mountain Snake)
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Despite all of Kill Bill’s faults, and they are myriad, at least it was better than Death Proof. Awful, awful Death Proof.
I actually like Death Proof. The ending makes it.