The Bride: Uma Thurman
Bill: David Carradine
Elle Driver: Daryl Hannah
Budd: Michael Madsen
Vernita Green: Vivica A. Fox
O-Ren Ishii: Lucy Liu
Hattori Hanzo: Sonny Chiba
Go Go Yubari: Chiaki Kuriyama
Sofie Fatale: Julie Dreyfus
13 October 2003
by Jasmine Park
Given the near-mythology that has been building about it for years, Quentin Tarantino's fourth film, Kill Bill, had quite a reputation to live up to. After several dreadful attempts at acting - including Four Rooms (1995), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), and Little Nicky (2000) - and a disappointingly tepid third film, Jackie Brown (1997), it seemed that Tarantino had reached the end of a brief but brilliant run with his first two films, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Then several months ago, when Miramax decided to make the dastardly move of milking its audiences for twice the money and half the satisfaction by slicing Kill Bill into two parts, it seemed nearly impossible for it to be any good at all. That Kill Bill is in fact a great film therefore comes as a total surprise.
The sparse storyline consists of various tropes of spaghetti westerns, Hong Kong action flicks, and Japanese samurai and yakuza films, with an unnamed heroine, known variously as the Bride or by her codename Black Mamba, who seeks revenge on her former posse, a host of four killers-for-hire named the Deadly Viper Assassins that is headed by the titular Bill. Pregnant with Bill's baby on her wedding day to another man, she was beaten, shot, and left for dead by Bill and the DiVAS, only to awaken from a coma four years later seeking coldhearted vengeance. Like Pulp Fiction, Tarantino mixes up the chronology of Kill Bill, so that the showdown with O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), who is at the top of her hit list, is saved for the film's end, while the fight with #2, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), occurs within the film's first few minutes. The battles with the remaining DiVAS on her hitlist - Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) - and finally with Bill himself (David Carradine) are saved for Vol. 2.
It goes without saying that the film is quite violent, although nowhere as painful to watch as the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs or the needle-to-the-chest scene in Pulp Fiction. The violence in Kill Bill is done with a cartoonish glee that never comes close to the kind of intimate film violence that dries your mouth and wracks your brain (see Lee Tamahori's Once Were Warriors and Tim Roth's The War Zone). For the bloodiest scenes, Tarantino deftly switches to black and white, and even branches into animé for the gorgeous sequence depicting O-Ren's bloody past, all of which keep the film just shy of an NC-17 rating.
Tarantino has always had excellent taste in choosing the music for his films, and Kill Bill is no exception. Not since Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) has movie music been used so skillfully or moodily, which is perhaps not entirely a coincidence, given that the RZA is credited with the original music of both films. It has long been my belief that the quality of a film is utterly belied by its opening sequence; Kill Bill's is a work of art, from its retro fonts to the Nancy Sinatra song, Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), whose lyrics, backed hauntingly by tremolo guitar, foretell the entire story. Later, Daryl Hannah saunters down a hospital corridor in a memorable black and white outfit whistling Bernard Herrmann's score from Twisted Nerve (1968), a sequence that, like so much else of the film, is filled to the brim with malicious wit and inventiveness.
Scene after scene is staged for deadpan comic effect, including the fight between Black Mamba and Vernita in a prototypical suburban Pasadena house, where the two women knife-fight as, through the living room bay window, we see a schoolbus pull up and Vernita's daughter hop out, or when Black Mamba carefully writes out her death list in large childish letters (BILL is of course written really really big at the bottom) in a notebook using alternating black and red pens. And the fight at the House of Blue Leaves with O-Ren's army, the Crazy 88, is a faithful distillation of Hong Kong-style action sequences, putting to shame both the tastefulness of the restaurant scene in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the CGI disaster of the Burly Brawl scene in The Matrix Reloaded. (Interestingly, all three scenes were choreographed by the now ubiquitous Yuen Wo Ping.) One of the film's best moments is the fight between Black Mamba and Go-Go Yubari, O-Ren's personal bodyguard, a perfect nightmare of a Japanese schoolgirl who wields a mace and chain. And unlike so many of his fashionable contemporaries, Tarantino understands how to blend the humor with outright beautiful filmmaking, culminating in the final showdown between Black Mamba and O-Ren, staged in a snowy garden at night with all the gravity of a Japanese samurai film.
Does Kill Bill have a soul? Of course not. Is Pulp Fiction a better film? Probably, given that it is the most important film of the last two decades. Are these unfair questions to ask? Absolutely. Where Pulp Fiction was the epitome of postmodern ingenuity, Kill Bill is the embodiment of postmodern cinematic style. What emerges from this two-hour riff on film history is unquestionably, exhilaratingly original, and is the very best that soulless but artful filmmaking can be.
Miramax presents a film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, language and sexual content).
Uma Thurman in Kill Bill
Chiaki Kuriyama, Lucy Liu, and Julie Dreyfus
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