Kill Bill, Volume 1

In the wake of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown, we've come to expect intrepid sub-Hollywood scavenger Quentin Tarantino to bowl us over with ingenious, amped-up, style-blending B-movie offshoots made with a quantum leap of cinematic panache. Influenced by cut-rate samurai imports, spaghetti Westerns, and exploitation flicks, Kill Bill, Volume 1 has sexy, gritty, droll Tarantino élan coming out its ears--and absurdly grisly dam-bursts of stage blood spurting from other violently severed body parts in ambitious marathon swordfight scenes. But while the film oozes style (and blood), it comes up short on substance, which is what has always set Tarantino's grindhouse homages head and shoulders above the pulp pictures that inform them. The jaw-dropping samurai showdowns are the culmination of a plot about a sultry, vengeance-seeking former assassin (Uma Thurman) who was double-crossed and left for dead by her employer (David Carradine) and his crew (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Vivica A. Fox, and Daryl Hannah). But she only tracks down a couple of them in this first installment of the awkwardly split-in-half film. Volume 2 is due later this year. Will the whole be better than the sum of its parts? Optional. [Note: DVD extras include a 22-minute “making of” featurette, a six-minute performance (with selected subtitles) by “The 5,6,7,8's” including “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield” and “I'm Blue,” and a Quentin Tarantino trailer gallery including a bootleg trailer and a teaser for the upcoming sequel Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Bottom line: a slim extras package for a slight film.] (R. Blackwelder)[Blu-ray Review—Sept. 16, 2008—Miramax, 111 min., R, $34.99—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 2003's Kill Bill: Volume 1 sports a great transfer with Dolby TrueHD 5.1 sound. The bonus features on this release are identical to those on the standard DVD release, including a 22-minute “making of” featurette, a six-minute performance (with selected subtitles) by “The 5, 6, 7, 8's” including “I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield” and “I'm Blue,” and a Quentin Tarantino trailer gallery. Bottom line: Blood looks good in Blu—Tarantino fans will appreciate.]