TV Times

TV Times

Kill Bill: The Legend Continues
By Harinda Vidanage
Seven years of silence has paid off for Director Quentin Tarentino hailed as one of the best movie makers of all time maintaining a radical break with the conventional Hollywood recipes to become a cult figure of his own making.
‘Kill Bill’ the story of a female assassin dubbed the Black Mamba for her ferocity and deadly strike featuring Uma Thurman hit the screens like a particle beam fired from USS Enterprise.

The experience behind the 1992 hit Reservoir Dogs, success behind Pulp Fiction hailed as the best action movie of the year 1997 , Kill Bill has thrown the movie making wizardry of Tarentino to the unprecedented heights . Kill Bill is both a homage and a re imagining of the genre films that Quentin Tarantino has seen and loved: spaghetti westerns, Chinese martial arts films, Japanese samurai movies as well as anime. Put simply, Tarantino describes the movie as a “duck press” of all the grind house cinema he’s absorbed over the past 35 years.

One woman’s quest for justice is presented in two installments of the movie, in Kill Bill- Vol. 1 the title character, played by David Carradine, is a mostly unseen sinister figure looming over the story who has organized an elite group called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS). All of the vipers are code-named after poisonous serpents and the deadliest of them all is Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), who is also Bill’s former lover. The Black Mamba is in the trail for justice after waking up from a four year coma following a gruesome massacre.

After Taking out Cottonmouth a member of the elite Divas which is actually the Chapter two of the movie, the viewer is taken back to Chapter one featuring Thurmans grisly escape from hospital, she flies to Okinawa to purchase a samurai sword from a Ninjutsu master whom she convinces by presenting a lucid case of her mission. From Okinawa it is off to Tokyo to pay a call on the first name on her hit list: Yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii, played by Charlie’s Angel Lucy Liu. The presentation of the movie in chapter format is another remarkable unraveling of this original creation.

Before the movie has ended, we have been treated to a typically jumbled chronology of events, including a yazuka (Japanese gangster) film homage rendered in lyrical anime, iconic shots of newly minted samurai swords, a massive sword battle that sends fountains of red spraying through a Japanese nightclub, and a stunning shot in which the carnage-filled nightclub’s doors open to reveal a tranquil winter garden.

The soundtrack alone uses such diverse excerpts as Luis Bacalov’s score for the 1972 spaghetti western “The Grand Duel” (played over the anime scene) and Quincy Jones’ “Ironside” theme.

Thurman holds everything together with a fierce performance delivered without a trace of irony. Her lanky body is built for high kicks, and she shows a feline grace in her swordplay. Her face reflects such grit, vengefulness and pain that Tarantino doesn’t feel the need to fill in too many blanks.

Yuen Woo-ping, generally regarded as the world’s greatest living master of movie martial arts, was unequivocal in his praise for Thurman’s accomplishments. As Tarantino recalls, “He came to me one day and said, ‘Quentin, you don’t know how truly good Uma has become.’ Ping is the master martial arts choreographer behind mega hits in the lights of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the enigmatic feature The Zu Warriors. Pings talents have been used to the maximum to create the all important battle content which is a go between Samurai sword skills and Mafiosi slashing.

As an undisputed global icon of the Kung Fu Craze of the 1970s, and a boyhood idol of Quentin Tarantino, David Carradine (Bill) clearly deserves a prime niche in a film designed, in large part, as the writer-director’s tribute to the martial arts genre.

Unlike the “Matrix” or “Lord of the Rings” movies, “Kill Bill” was conceived as a single film; yes, “Vol. 1” ends at a point when you’re willing to take a break, but that’s what intermissions used to be for.

When a story revolves around crossing off five names from a hit list, and the lead character gets to only two of them, you can’t credibly say “The End.” David Carradine is virtually hidden in this Volume one but will be introduced in Volume two for the ultimate show down. Thus ‘Kill Bill’ is a comprehensive package for the local movie viewer which is worth all its money.

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