Revenge of a beautiful killer
'Kill Bill' is as bloody as they come, but you may be back for Volume 2
By Johana Elmanova
Co-Editor
If you‘d like to experience true Asian martial arts violence with blood splashing and characters dying almost as quickly as they appear on the screen, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is the perfect choice for you.
Quentin Tarantino split the original three hour - movie into two seemingly unrelated parts, presenting scenes in unusual order. Scenes return in flashbacks revealing the life of the main character played by Uma Thurman, whom we know as Black Mamba, but whose real name remains unknown.
The story starts on the day of Black Mamba's wedding, which turns into a bloody show that leaves the wedding party lying dead in their own blood. Bill (David Carradine), the bridegroom, the father of Black Mamba's unborn child and an assassin, is never seen in the movie, but we know he leaves the wedding mayhem convinced of his bride's death.
Carradine, in the title role, will actually be seen in the second “volume“ of this film, we’re told. Black Mamba, who had been a professional killer working for Bill, the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, actually survives. After waking from a four year-coma, she prepares for revenge.
Though I saw a number of very disgusting and bloody scenes, one of the most violent, according to the director himself, takes place when Mamba wakes from her coma realizing that she has been sold to rapists during her condition and slams a door repeatedly against the head of an unfortunate male hospital staff member. “That's more violent than someone getting their arm cut off,“ Tarantino told Newsweek, “because you could actually imagine it happening, I've always said that a beheading in a movie doesn't make me wince. But when somebody gets a paper cut in a movie, you go, 'Ooh!'.”
Most of the movie takes place in Japan, where Black Mamba is following one of the three female assassins, O-Ren Ishii, aka Cottonmouth, played by Lucy Liu. At one point the movie changes into a cartoon that reveals more about O-Ren and presents, surprisingly, one of the bloodiest and cruelest scenes of the movie.
The unexpected end leaves you sad and empty, as you have been witnessing a series of the martial-arts fights that produce masses of bodies. This feeling is enhanced by the lack of a story line and unexplained movie moments that skip from English to Japanese with Czech subtitles superimposed.
The movie may lack emotional feeling and intellectual depth, but one thing is sure: The ending will leave you in such doubt and surprise that you will not want to miss Kill Bill: Vol. 2 when it comes out early next year.
--Johana Elmanova can be reached at johanaelmanova@yahoo.com.
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Last issue date: Dec. 12, 2003
