Property Review: Kill Bill Vol. 1

Photos courtesy of imdb.com

Kill Bill Vol. 1
Miramax, 2003

Kill Bill Vol. 1 gets the job done

Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino as a person – he’s super obnoxious and pretentious as all get out – but the man can make a film masterpiece. Kill Bill is a series of films that became everything we wanted but didn’t know we wanted from him post-Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, and it is glorious.

The story is fairly simple: In her roaring tale of revenge, the Bride is beat to a pulp and then summarily executed for unknown reasons beyond this one sentence: “But Bill it’s your baby …” What led to that grisly moment and the aftermath is the tale of a woman wronged.

The Bride, as it turns out, is hard as hell to kill. She doesn’t die but she’s in a coma for four years, seemingly losing her baby in the process. When she wakes up, we discover that she was no ordinary bride; she was a killer, a contract assassin who performed jobs in the employ of the titular Bill. Master assassin Bill gathered a squad of his deadly vipers – assassins that worked for Bill who all used snake code names – to avenge him while he personally delivered the coup de grace to the Bride. Because the movie has been out for at least 20 years, it’s safe to say that everyone knows the reason that Bill tracked down the Bride and had her and her wedding party slaughtered. But this is the linchpin of the tale: the Bride, now renowned as Beatrix Kiddo, had her reasons for getting away. She was pregnant, wanting to leave the life that she knew Bill would never let her leave alive. So, she faked her death and disappeared. Bill’s gathering of Beatrix’s fellow squad mates and the massacre that followed led to the Death List 5 and the killing of Bill. It is that journey to kill Bill that we were so fortunate to witness.

Kill Bill literally starts with a bang, and it never slows down. The first part of the tale is enchanting; you want to know who the woman is, why she is bloody and why Bill shot her. Who is Bill? Beginning with Nancy Sinatra’s haunting cover of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” the stark visuals create certain expectations. Because it’s a Tarantino film, it’s going to be out of sequence, it’s going to be gory and it’s going to have fantastic acting. Launching from that, let’s start with the fact that Uma Thurman as Beatrix is amazing. We immediately felt drawn to Beatrix and her plight, and as soon as she woke up from that coma that Bill put her in, we rooted for her. Wiggling her big toe was the start of a love affair.


We’re introduced to the other Deadly Vipers and their associates: Bud, Bill’s brother; Vernita Green, now living as housewife and mother Jeannie Bell; O-Ren Ishii, head of the Tokyo yakuza and boss of Julia Dreyfus’ Sophie Fatale and Chiaki Kuriyama’s Gogo Yubari; and, Elle Driver, right-hand and most recent lover of Bill. These deadly vipers, as played by Michael Madsen, Vivica Fox, Lucy Liu and Daryl Hannah, respectively, are mesmerizing. Brilliantly embodied by each actor, while there’s backstory given, you want to know the nuances of the relationship between them before they ganged up on Beatrix at Bill’s behest in 1999. You want to know where the word play about silly rabbits originated between Beatrix and O-Ren. It’s the acting and the attention to detail that draw you in and leave you wanting more.

And then there’s David Carradine as Bill. The late actor is briefly featured in the first volume and there’s little you can do but anticipate the feared Bill. But boy does Carradine make the wait worth it. Bill is just as fearsome as promised, cryptic yet charming, and Carradine is the catalyst. He’s subtle yet fierce, overreacting to the discovery that Beatrix was alive and pregnant with a directed beatdown and execution-style shot to the head. But then he’s honorable, telling his right-hand woman that they were not going to kill Beatrix in the hospital because they were better than that to their enemies. It’s the contrasting style that makes Carradine the scene stealer that he is, and we as the viewers were lucky, if not privileged, to witness his range here.

Kill Bill is violence at its best, wrapped up in the beautiful bow of martial arts and compelling ideas of right vs. wrong and revenge. It’s such a phenom in the film world that 21 years after the second volume, we’re still waiting to find out if Elle Driver made it to have her revenge against Beatrix. That all started with a fantastic homage to spaghetti westerns in the form of Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film. Let’s hear it for the rip, roaring tale of revenge for a bride scorned.

Story: 10
Acting: 10
Directing: 8

Total: 28/30 or 9.3

HOW WE GRADE

We score the properties in three categories: Casting (or voice acting in cases of animated), plot and similarities to its source material. Each category receives points out of the maximum of 10 per category and 30 overall. The percentage is the final score.

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