"She is looking for revenge and hopping from movie to movie to movie to find it." Q. Tarantino


Tarantino’s opening credits in Kill Bill are much more than a label, much more than the perfunctory bookends of film culture that are equal parts hype and tradition. A Band Apart Productions introduces a film obviously allying itself with the New Waver’s blend of a love of American B-grade noir with film for film’s sake editing genius. Shaw Brothers Studios presents a film obviously not afraid to be run into the ground by the critical establishment because it was made in the same studio that made Dirty Ho, Chinatown Kid, or Avenging Warriors of Shaolin.


Quentin Tarantino’s Fourth Film (yes the credits actually say this) wears its credited influences on its sleeve as gleefully as a Japanese pop star. Whereas many credits simply mark the point of transition between sitting in the theater and the actual beginning of the film, Tarantino’s credits themselves worm their way into the film. They are a framework, a constituted reality that places us immediately back in the grindhouse and summons forth all of the ridiculously entertaining codes given birth to by classic Blaxploitation urban fantasies, Kung Fu epics, and spaghetti western soundtracks. Kill Bill’s credits are iconography in the strictest sense of the word, channeling visual and narrative ideals from worlds as intangible as original copies of Game of Death.


The Bride With No Name (her name is actually bleeped out every time it is said by various villains throughout this first installment of the storyline) wakes up in a hospital bed from a lengthy coma following a botched assassination attempt. She wakes up, quite literally, with the taste of blood in her mouth and embarks on a chronology and genre bending quest for revenge. As said in an interview by Tarantino, "She is looking for revenge and hopping from movie to movie to movie to find it." Also moving from form to form, the story opens on an expressionist black and white close-up on her bloody face. Subtle tones begin creeping in from Bergman before giving way to fight scene that takes us from overhead shots to sterile sweeping Japanese crime-thriller pans to a jaunty urban funk soundtrack with deliberate undertones of Shaft.


Beside the stellar cast makes the cameo appearances of things like Bruce Lee’s yellow jumpsuit from Game of Death, miniature models of Tokyo left undamaged from the production of Japanese monster films, a few pointed Star Trek references, and Sonny Chiba’s ubiquitous Hattori Hanzo character. In one brilliantly graphic anime sequence (an infinitely subjective medium) we finally see many of these violently stylized elements Tarantino that is monopolizing upon projected to their logical extreme, as if the film itself has just taken a little nap and dreams its way through that part of the script. In pushing all these limits, Tarantino’s methodology is simple. Revenge films all use simple formulae that we immediately recognize, they are not necessarily mindless, just pat. It takes such little work for us to watch them that these basic narrative forms provide a perfect canvas for painting film that leaps immediately off of the screen. We engage with it instantly. Again, this doesn't mean the people who like such films are lazy, just well-prepared. There already exists a link between the audience and the film at every level from story to form, Tarantino just steps into this gap with a little more cinematic savvy than critics are used to.


Kill Bill is the pop action hero fueled daydream of a media saturated generation that thinks more in terms of soundtracks and sequences than in terms of dialogue or the Hollywood ending. Tarantino doesn’t direct films; he pieces together symphonies of disparate bits of cultural data and conducts them together in the editing room. Is there anything of substance behind the bloody curtains of Kill Bill? Probably not. But who goes to Tarantino for any other than a good story? As Godard often said: All you need for a good movie is a girl and a gun. Or a sword.


Kill Bill simply runs through the channels of expectation worn smoothly into the minds of the Kung-fu epic, Blaxploitation, and spaghetti Western society. In Tarantino these genres probably see the most transcendence they will ever attain, and in Kill Bill they rise from the graveyard of worn conventions one more time to tell the same stories of justice they died telling. Which really is the story we all want to see anyway. Some critics will certainly dismiss the gore-obsessed Tarantino, quipping about his directorial style: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Only a critic could say that, Kill Bill on its own is way too slick to give the audience room enough to do anything but enjoy the action.