Kill Bill, Volumes 1 & 2
Nobody does pure adrenaline like Quentin Tarantino. Kill Bill: Volume 1 didn’t take home the gold for the best flick of the year, or even the best Tarantino joint. But damn, it’s the primo way to mainline pure adrenaline at the movies. Whether that rush sends you soaring or leaves you puking your guts out? Well, that depends on your taste in ultra violence.
Kill Bill from start to finish is a blood-soaked, heart-pounding rollercoaster ride. It’s like witnessing pure mayhem through a lens coated in delirium. The story doesn’t unfold in your typical run-of-the-mill Earth; nah, it’s set in a martial arts movie universe where the rules we know just don’t apply. It’s a place where spaghetti westerns and Asian martial arts collide with Tarantino’s unmistakable touch reigning supreme. This is a world straight out of Manga and comic-book serials, where style and trash come together in a collision of epic proportions. It’s a world where blood shoots out of stumps like a damn geyser.
Tarantino kicks things off with a bang, slapping on the logo of a 1970s Hong Kong production company, Shaw Brothers. It’s the perfect appetizer for the feast of fan references to come. The heroine’s iconic yellow jumpsuit pays homage to Bruce Lee’s Game of Death, while those Kato masks? Straight out of Lee’s TV series, The Green Hornet. And then, he ropes in Japanese action star Sonny Chiba as a legendary sword-craftsman, and throws in Chiaki Kuriyama from Battle Royale and Jun Kunimura from Ichi the Killer for good measure.
And who could forget David Carradine, the man who robbed Bruce Lee of his rightful starring role in Kung Fu, now playing the ultra-villain Bill? Though, truth be told, we dont actually get a glimpse of him until Volume 2.
Tarantino packs all this goodness into a deliciously pulpy package, and over the years, he’s managed to convince a whole generation of moviegoers that they’ve been part of this cult world all along.
I’ve allowed you to keep your wicked life for two reasons. And the second reason is so you can tell him in person everything that happened here tonight. I want him to witness the extent of my mercy by witnessing your deformed body. I want you to tell him all the information you just told me. I want him to know what I know. I want him to know I want him to know. And I want them all to know they’ll all soon be as dead as O-Ren.
Kill Bill is a classic tale of revenge, the perfect excuse for a martial arts showdown. Uma Thurman has never been more badass than she is here, playing the Bride, a pregnant woman who catches a bullet to the head on her wedding day, courtesy of her former crew under the thumb of the eponymous bad guy, Bill. Darryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, and Vivica A. Fox round out the cast as Bill’s Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and let me tell you, they ain’t here to play nice.
The Bride wakes up from her coma, no speech or motor-skill issues to slow her down. She powers her legs through sheer will and arms herself with a badass samurai sword crafted by Japanese master Hattori Hanzō. And so begins her blood-soaked journey through a world where folks settle their scores without a single gun or cop in sight.
Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she faces off against yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii in a showdown for the ages. Tarantino weaves this battle with her earlier dust-up with Vernita Green in Pasadena, leading to one hell of a climax. The Bride even offers a little girl a glimpse into her future, a moment as hard as it is audacious.
But Kill Bill’ ain't just outrageous and trashy; it’s a love letter to world cinema. How many American flicks have the guts to set foot outside the good ol’ U.S. of A., complete with whole stretches of subtitled non-English dialogue? This is world cinema without the stuffed-shirt attitude. It’s gloriously weird, and it's got Tarantino written all over it.
Alright, let me rap about Kill Bill: Volume 2. Its a wild celebration of moviemaking, cruising from one daring chapter to the next with reckless abandon. It’s irony, satire, drama, and pure action all wrapped up into one glorious package. Personally, I dug it even more than Volume 1. It ain’t just a sequel, it’s a continuation and a conclusion, all shot at the same damn time. And now that we’ve got the whole story, the first part takes on a whole new dimension.
Volume 2 holds its own, but it’s even better if you’ve caught Kill Bill. The flick is a distillation of all those grindhouse kung-fu flicks that I love beyond reason. Websites have already dissected his inspirations — how a sunset came from this, a sword from that. But he ain’t just copying; he’s elevating. There’s a fire in the film, like he’s cranking up the heat under his memories.
The movie kicks off with The Bride behind the wheel, laying out her mission to off Bill. Sure, there’s a lot of explaining going on, but that's one of Tarantino’s signature moves. He crafts dialogue with quirky details that hint at the obsessions of his characters. That’s what gives his movies that mythical quality. The characters ain’t chatting about the weather; they’re diving deep into their legends, methods, beliefs, and arcane lore.
Flashbacks drag us back to the bloodbath at the Two Pines Wedding Chapel, where The Bride and her whole damn wedding party got a bullseye painted on their backs by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Bill was the puppet master, and the face-off between him and The Bride hints at the twisted depth of their connection. David Carradine’s performance somehow suggests that there might’ve been something real between Bill and The Bride, despite all the crazy details surrounding it.
Somehow, The Bride defied the odds, surviving the massacre and waking up from a coma ready to serve up a cold dish of revenge to the Deadly Vipers and Bill. The first part was all about hardcore action as she went toe-to-toe with her enemies, and a big chunk of her success came from convincing the legendary swordmaker Hattori Hanzō to whip up a weapon for her.
Looked dead, didn’t I? But I wasn’t. But it wasn’t from lack of trying, I can tell you that. Actually, Bill’s last bullet put me in a coma. A coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements refer to as a ‘roaring rampage of revenge.’ I roared. And I rampaged. And I got bloody satisfaction. I’ve killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point, but I have only one more. The last one. The one I’m driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna kill Bill.
In Volume 2, she crosses paths with another Asian legend, the badass warrior master Pai Mei, played by Gordon Liu. Pai Mei’s a tough son of a gun, and their training sessions are downright brutal.
The action in Volume 2 throws us up against some serious heavyweights, including Elle Driver, the one-eyed queen of martial arts, and Bill’s beer-swilling brother, Budd, played by Michael Madsen. The showdown with Budd includes a sequence where The Bride seems like she’s about to cash in her chips after being buried alive. But, of course, she ain’t kicking the bucket just yet. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
The showdown with Elle Driver is a masterpiece of fight choreography. Thurman and Hannah must’ve busted their asses in training to pull it off. Their brawl goes down inside Budd’s trailer, tearing the place to shreds in the process. And I love how the film messes with formats here, flipping from widescreen to that classic 4x3 ratio, giving you that tight, suffocating feeling of being buried alive.
One of the things that makes Volume 2 stand out is how it fills in the blanks, develops the characters, and makes them resonate. Especially in that epic final face-off between The Bride and Bill. It ain’t all nonstop action; there’s some hypnotic dialogue in there too. It’s a quiet, deadly punchline that ties the whole damn thing together.
Put both parts together, and Tarantino’s crafted one hell of a saga, celebrating the martial arts genre while also rising above it. Kill Bill is a distilled essence of everything I love about cinema, leaving you pumped up for no good reason at all.
