I SAW KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR

Due to my daunting schedule, I have a hard time catching movies beyond the three-hour mark, but for the sake of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, I tackled the hefty load. 

There's not much I can say about the Quentin Tarantino sojourn that hasn't already been said, whether regarding its two-movie cut(s) or its bold, 35mm, epic re-edit. The story of Uma Thurman's Beatrix Kiddo, aka the Bride, is known and accepted (avoiding any cause for rehashing), and for those who love the lady's vengeful quest, nothing quite compares.  

The differences in presentations can be diagnosed as small or large, depending on one's vantage, with a famous, black-and-white sequence now projected in blazing, violent color, with nips, tucks and additions fixed throughout the streams and flows to create a sublime seamlessness, which doesn't render the previous version(s) obsolete. On this basis, The Whole Bloody Affair is a masterpiece that neither detracts from nor diminishes its legendary foundation. It's a big, bold companion piece, and an astounding, breathtaking one, at that. 

Seeing the adventure in massive progression, (despite the fifteen-minute intermission), might be the superior way to embrace it, for its martial-arts, Sonny Chiba/Bruce Lee/Kung Fu splendor is all the more mesmerizing this way, allowing it to recall bit by bit the long string of spirited, 1970s inspirations that shaped it. 

And it isn't just 1970s, martial-arts cinema that The Whole Bloody Affair invokes. It's the 1970s in general, with garish, pulse-pounding, cultural nuances galore, all geared for a Game of Death prize, swirled with a sprinkle of a 1970s UHF airing of The War of the Gargantuas, just for good, allegorical measure. In addition, the use of the Ironside theme is a nostalgic, pitch-perfect touch, and perhaps among Tarantino's music cues, it resonates like no other in capturing the ideal, thematic mood (though much can be said, as well, of David Bowie/Giorgio Moroder's Cat People: "Putting Out the Fire" inclusion in Inglourious Basterds. Still, I'll side with the Ironside novelty as Tarantino's sporadic summit.) 

Such creative tactics make The Whole Blood Affair a visual time machine, one that doesn't merely return to those precise periods when Volume 1 and Volume 2 surfaced, but to the type of filmmaking that most modern moviemakers (even the solid ones) tend to avoid, perhaps because they either choose to forget what came before or wish to forge something new and (ahem) improved. 

Tarantino, however, remembers and respects the artistic good ol' days and the sincere, drive-in/grindhouse filmmaking that made Kill Bill an endearing homage. The Whole Bloody Affair is the epitome of reflective, avant-garde filmmaking that salutes the past, so that it may dominate the present and in turn, influence action cinema for the future.