Quentin Tarantino burst onto the cinema scene with the quick one-two of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. After the slight mis-fire of Jackie Brown, he came back with this violent two-parter of martial arts, revenge film and horror. Uma Thurman has perhaps never been better as The Bride as she takes down The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. After she is attacked in a church, she is shot in the head by their leader, David Carradine and left to die. Four years later, The Bride returns to take down the crew and, in true Tarantino episodic fashion, she goes for each target individually including Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah and Lucy Liu. This was the first of Tarantinos films to focus more on the style of the piece and not the characters and through the many sword/gun/fist fights its clear that he is focussing on recreating the styles of martial arts classics, spaghetti westerns and Argento/Fulci blood-letting. The red stuff flows through-out but it has the feel of a comic-book and not the real (well, as real as Tarantino gets) worlds of Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds. The films hold up still if taken in their revenge format and the performances are suitably stylised. Tarantino, however, is the star as his moulds his styles and pours his blood. As The Bride says Those of you lucky enough to have your lives, take them with you. However, leave the limbs youve lost. They belong to me now.
