Kill Bill: Volume 1
Kill Bill is the fourth feature film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and stars Uma Thurman. Though technically one film, it was released in two parts due to its long (3 hour, 47 minute) running time. Volume 1 was released on October 10, 2003 and Volume 2 was released on April 16, 2004. Volume 1 grossed US$70 million in its American release while Volume 2 grossed US$66 million.
Reviews were mostly positive, with some reviewers regarding it as a cinematic masterpiece. Many felt it resembled an anime. Other reviewers felt that Tarantino's homage to Asian cinema was overly indulgent, or that it was a new low in cinematic morality. Meanwhile, some conservative critics decried its extremely graphic and exaggerated depictions of violence.
Overall plot
Template:Spoiler Uma Thurman plays "The Bride", seeking bloody revenge against "Bill" (David Carradine) and his assassins for their ruthless attack on her at a wedding chapel. With the rest of the wedding party slain, Bill shoots The Bride in the head as she tells him that she is pregnant with his baby. Waking from a coma four years later, The Bride is determined to kill all of the assassins, including Bill, her former boss and lover. The film was shot over the course of eight months, with scenes filmed on location in North America, Japan, and China.
Kill Bill is divided into ten chapters, five chapters per volume. As is common in Tarantino films, they are not arranged in chronological order.
In cinematic order:
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In rough chronological order:
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Volume 1
| Kill Bill: Volume 1 | |
|---|---|
| File:Kill Bill Volume 1 movie.jpg | |
| Directed by | Quentin Tarantino |
| Written by | Quentin Tarantino Uma Thurman (characters) |
| Produced by | Lawrence Bender |
| Starring | Uma Thurman |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
Running time | 111 min. |
| Budget | $55,000,000 |
Plot
The Bride (aka "Black Mamba", played by Uma Thurman) is a former member of "The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad." She attempts to retire and get married, but, while visibly pregnant, is attacked during her wedding rehearsal by the Deadly Vipers. The groom and the rest of the wedding party are murdered while The Bride is shot in the head and left for dead. Bill (David Carradine) later sends Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) to finish off the comatose Bride in the hospital, but decides at the last second that killing her while she lies helpless would be dishonorable.
During her four-year coma, Buck, a hospital employee, sells her body to rapists. Soon after awakening, The Bride must confront a would-be rapist Buck has just left alone with her for the first time. Though severely weakened from not having moved for so long, she attacks and kills the rapist and eventually Buck, taking the keys to Buck's "Pussy Wagon" and launching her quest to eliminate her former associates.
She travels first to Okinawa, Japan where she asks master swordsmith Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba) for a katana sword with which to accomplish her revenge. Hattori Hanzo was Bill's teacher, and feels an obligation to help The Bride for having trained him. He agrees to break the oath he swore years before to never create "something that kills people" again.
Flying to Tokyo, Japan, the Bride locates O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), a half-Chinese-American, half-Japanese woman raised on an American military base, orphaned by the yakuza, and now "the boss of all bosses," ruler of the Tokyo underworld. In a nightclub named the "House of Blue Leaves", The Bride kills or maims all but one of O-Ren's bodyguards, the Crazy 88. She then pursues O-Ren outside to a snow-covered garden. Although injured in the exchange, The Bride ends the duel by slicing off the top of O-Ren Ishii's head, exposing her brain (later censored in some versions). Next, she obtains information about Bill and her other former associates by torturing the half-Japanese, half-French Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), one of Bill's lovers and O-Ren's lawyer, second lieutenant, and best friend.
Making another death list on the plane, the Bride then returns to the United States, to Pasadena, California where she kills Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox).
Details
- The Japanese release of Volume 1 begins with a dedication to Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku.
- The film also features an anime sequence explaining O-Ren's tragic backstory. It is directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, who also directed the Linkin Park video for "Breaking The Habit", with the animation studio Production I.G, producers of Ghost in the Shell among other works.
- During this first half of Kill Bill, The Bride's real name is bleeped out when characters say it. However, The Bride's real name is present on her boarding pass for her flights to Okinawa and Tokyo.
- A different cut of the film was released specifically for Japanese audiences, where it opened several weeks after the North American release. While the American cut of the movie shows a notably violent segment (the battle at the House of Blue Leaves) in black and white, the Japanese cut shows it in color.
- The Crazy 88s: in Japan the number "88" is an "evil number"; there are not actually eighty-eight members of the group, however, and in Volume Two Bill muses that the Crazy 88s simply "thought it [the name] sounded cool."
Volume 2
| Kill Bill: Volume 1 | |
|---|---|
| File:Kill Bill Vol 2 The Bride.jpg | |
| Directed by | Quentin Tarantino |
| Written by | Quentin Tarantino Uma Thurman (characters) |
| Produced by | Lawrence Bender |
| Starring | Uma Thurman David Carradine |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
Running time | 136 min. |
| Budget | $30,000,000 |
Plot
Note: It is revealed in Volume 2 that The Bride's real name is Beatrix Kiddo. Though this does not occur until past the halfway point, Beatrix is the name used throughout this section to avoid confusion.
Kill Bill: Volume 2 continues the story of Beatrix (The Bride) and her quest for vengeance. After a brief flashback to Bill shooting her at the wedding chapel, she begins the film by speaking directly to the camera, reviewing the events of Kill Bill: Volume 1 and stating that she is on her way to "kill Bill." We return to the wedding chapel, and see for the first time what happened there before the attack. The segment is shot in black-and-white, with a relaxed pace. Taking a break from her wedding rehearsal, Beatrix is surprised to see Bill on the front porch of the chapel, playing his flute. He has tracked her down despite her attempt to leave him and her life as an assassin behind. They talk, and the story continues in real time up through the attack.
Moving to the present, when Bill hears of O-Ren's and Vernita Green's deaths, he knows Beatrix is going down the list and warns Budd (aka "Sidewinder", played by Michael Madsen) to be careful: she is coming. Budd seems unconcerned, concluding, "That woman deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die."
When she sneaks up to kill Budd at his trailer, he is ready with a shotgun, firing non-lethal rock salt into her chest immediately after the door is opened. He then phones Elle, who agrees to pay him a million dollars for Beatrix's Hattori Hanzo sword—with one condition: Beatrix "must suffer to her last breath."
Budd puts Beatrix in a wood coffin and buries her alive.
Flashback to many years before, when Bill took Beatrix to Pai Mei's temple. Pai Mei was revered as one of the greatest martial arts instructors (a perfect example of the Elderly Martial Arts Master stock character). Bill convinces him to train Beatrix, though it appears he fought his former master as part of the "discussion". Beatrix's training is extremely rigorous, with many hardships.
Back in the coffin, Beatrix uses a board-breaking technique learned from Pai Mei, and eventually drives a fist through the lid. She is able to break the coffin and escape from the grave. She then hikes back to Budd's trailer where, from a rock ledge, she sees Elle Driver (aka "California Mountain Snake").
Elle, along with Budd, believes her to be dead, and is meeting Budd to buy Beatrix's Hanzo sword for a million dollars. However, she has planted a black mamba in the suitcase with the money. When he opens the case, the snake strikes him. Reacting to the attack, Budd throws the money and some other things around his trailer, then crumbles to the floor. Elle lectures Budd as he dies.
While Elle is gathering the money to leave, Bill calls her cell phone. She tells him that Beatrix killed Budd with a black mamba, and that she killed Beatrix. She says that if he goes to a certain cemetery, he will be standing at "the final resting place of Beatrix Kiddo." This is the first time in the series that The Bride's name is spoken without the audio being bleeped.
The phone call is over when Elle picks up the Hanzo sword to leave the trailer. She opens the door, and Beatrix attacks her, kicking her back inside. In the ensuing fight between the two women, Elle has Beatrix's sword. However, contrary to what he told others, Budd had kept his own Hanzo sword, which Beatrix finds during the fight.
Elle and Beatrix have a brief conversation while standing apart. We learn that years before, Pai Mei had snatched out Elle's eye. Elle reveals to Beatrix that she got her revenge when she poisoned Pai Mei's food, killing him. Elle and Beatrix clash briefly with the legendary Hanzo swords. Swords locked, Beatrix's hand darts out and snatches Elle's remaining eye, blinding her. Walking past the black mamba on the floor, Beatrix takes her own sword and abandons the trailer and Elle, who is smashing things and screaming, unable to locate her enemy.
(At first, it may seem disappointing that Budd was not directly killed by Beatrix. However, considering the Bride's codename is "Black Mamba", it could be said that she killed him after a fashion, and if she had not come after him in the first place, he would still be alive. Likewise, narrative logic might suggest that Elle Driver fell to the same black mamba that killed Budd. Therefore, it appears as if Tarantino is applying irony to the deaths of numbers three and four of the Bride's death list.)
The story shifts to Mexico and to Esteban, a pimp who raised Bill and was a friend of his mother. Beatrix asks him, in a very respectful manner, where Bill is. He tells her, saying that Bill would want him to.
Beatrix drives to Bill's home, prepared to kill him. However, she finds that Bill is expecting her, with a surprise: B.B., their four-year-old daughter, whom Beatrix had thought was murdered during the wedding chapel attack, is alive and well, apparently delivered while Beatrix was comatose (the audience is given this revelation during Bill's conversation with Sofie Fatale at the end of Volume 1). Beatrix is overcome with emotion upon finding her daughter and her mission is temporarily put on hold while her attention shifts entirely to B.B., spending hours alone with her and watching a movie with her until B.B. falls asleep.
Beatrix returns to the living room and has a strange conversation with Bill, during which he shoots her with a dart containing truth serum. She tells him why she tried to retire: how she realized upon becoming pregnant that she must put her daughter's future above Bill, and leave behind the assassin's life. Bill compares Beatrix with Clark Kent (Superman), deprecating her attempts to be a normal citizen and saying that she was trying to hide her true, destined identity.
In their final encounter in the back yard, Bill accepts his fate after Beatrix disables him using the fatal "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique", taught exclusively to her by Pai Mei without Bill's knowledge. The technique can be described as five blows to pressure points on the body, most notably the chest. As the victim walks away, he lasts only until his fifth step, whereupon his heart explodes inside his chest.
Details
- Samuel L. Jackson has a cameo role in the movie as Rufus, an organist in the El Paso Chapel. Jackson's character was also rumored to be Jules from Pulp Fiction, because of that character's desire to "walk the earth."
- During Bill's interrogation of Beatrix, he says that she is a "natural born killer", a reference to the movie Natural Born Killers, for which Tarantino also wrote the initial screenplay.
- The flute Bill is seen playing both outside the chapel and prior to Beatrix's training, is of the same style carried by another of David Carridine's characters, Kain, of Kung-fu fame.
Cast
| Actor | Role | AKA |
| Uma Thurman | Beatrix Kiddo | The Bride, Black Mamba, Mommy |
| David Carradine | Bill | Snake Charmer |
| Vivica A. Fox | Vernita Green | Copperhead |
| Lucy Liu | O-Ren Ishii | Cottonmouth |
| Michael Madsen | Budd | Sidewinder |
| Daryl Hannah | Elle Driver | California Mountain Snake |
| Sonny Chiba | Hattori Hanzo | |
| Chiaki Kuriyama | Gogo Yubari | |
| Julie Dreyfus | Sofie Fatale | |
| Gordon Liu | Johnny Mo & Pai Mei | |
| Michael Parks | Earl McGraw & Esteban Vihaio | |
| Perla Haney-Jardine | B.B. | |
| Helen Kim | Karen Kim |
Releases
DVD release
In the United States Kill Bill: Volume 1 was released as a DVD on April 13, 2004 while Volume 2 was released August 10, 2004.
Before the release of Volume 1, Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, commented on future multiple releases of the Kill Bill DVDs: "This is the beauty of having two volumes—Vol. 1 goes out, Vol. 2 goes out, then Vol. 1 Special Edition, Vol. 2 Special Edition, the two-pack, then the Tarantino collection as a boxed set out for Christmas. It's called multiple bites at the apple. And you multiply this internationally."
These comments were heavily criticized by the online DVD community, and may have influenced DVD sales, which were lower than expected. As of July 2005, only the basic DVDs have been released, with almost no special features. No further DVD releases have been announced.
Planned sequel
Tarantino told Entertainment Weekly in April 2004 that he is planning a sequel:
- Oh yeah, initially I was thinking this would be my Dollars trilogy. I was going to do a new one every ten years. But I need at least fifteen years before I do this again.
- I've already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on The Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers. I might even shoot a couple of scenes for it now so I can get the actresses while they're this age.
Nikki is the daughter of character Vernita Green, who The Bride kills at the beginning of Volume 1.
Soundtracks
Soundtrack albums have been released for each volume. Both were organised (and to a certain extent, produced and orchestrated by) the RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. The soundtrack for Volume 1 reached #45 on the Billboard 200 album chart and #1 on the soundtracks chart in August 2003. The soundtrack for Volume 2 reached #58 on the Billboard 200 and #2 on the Billboard soundtracks chart in the US. It has also reached the ARIA Top 50 album charts in Australia.
Influences
General
Kill Bill relies heavily on film influences that Tarantino wished to pay tribute to. These include the spaghetti western, Kung Fu movies of the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese and Japanese martial arts films, revenge-themed movies such as Lady Snowblood, and films like The Seven Samurai. There are also several references to other films either written and/or directed by Tarantino. Some elements of the story and the character Elle Driver in particular are inspired by the Swedish movie Thriller - en grym film.
Specific allusions to other works
Tarantino also features direct nods to many of his influences in his movies. Here are some examples of this in Kill Bill:
- Near the end of the opening credits, a silhouette evokes Citizen Kane.
- The siren-like musical sequence denoting The Bride's encounters with her nemeses is from the theme of police drama Ironside (TV series), starring Raymond Burr as a detective who is confined to a wheelchair after a sniper attack. The "Ironside" theme music was written by Quincy Jones.
- The Bride's yellow jumpsuit is from Bruce Lee's Game of Death.
- The scene of The Bride standing in the middle of fifty-plus people and still winning the fight is similar to the chambara scenes of countless old Japanese samurai movies.
- The masks worn by the members of the Crazy 88 are the same style that Bruce Lee's character Kato wore in the TV series The Green Hornet. The accompanying music during the en-masse swordfight is also a nod to the series, which used Al Hirt's jazzy trumpet rendition of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" as its theme.
External links
- Official web site
- Kill Bill: Vol. 1 at IMDb
- Kill Bill: Vol. 2 at IMDb
- Everything Tarantino, unofficial fan site
- The Quentin Tarantino Archives, international fansite and community
- Kill Bill References Guide
- Kill Bill: Vol. 1 screenshots
- Hanzo's Bar, Kill Bill info and discussion forum