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Kill Bill, Volume 1 (2003)
There is a scene midway through Quentin Tarantino’s second film, Pulp Fiction, in which the boxer Butch (Bruce Willis) searches for a suitable weapon to utilize in the murder of two rapists. He cycles through a hammer, a baseball bat, a chainsaw, none of which is destructive enough for his purposes until his eyes settle on a samurai sword. It obviously is not the character’s choice what weapon he picks, it was Tarantino’s as screenwriter and director. Tarantino is acting vicariously through Butch by having him not only pick the most deadly weapon but pay homage to one of Tarantino’s favorite genres, the samurai film. In his fourth film, Kill Bill: Volume One, Tarantino takes a variation of this one scene and turns it into a style over substance ride of homage.
The first half of what was originally planned to be one film, Kill Bill: Volume One pays more than homage to the samurai flick. Tarantino sticks everything from exploitation films, spaghetti westerns, anime, and kung fu serials along with samurai films into a blender adding his pop culture references, infamous dialogue, and violence to the mix.
The film’s beginning sets this tone right away by showing us a logo of kung fu masters the Shaw Brothers, a 70’s “Feature Presentation” logo, and a title card of a Klingon proverb from Star Trek before finally settling on a black and white shot of the Bride’s (Uma Thurman) blood caked face. He hear the rattle of cowboy boots and a voice off screen, belonging to the unseen Bill (David Carradine), asking “Do you find me sadistic?...No Kiddo, at this moment, this is me at my most masochistic.” We hear the cock of a pistol and just as the Bride utters “Bill, it’s your baby” she is shot in the face and Tarantino makes an incredibly violent cut to the beginning credits.
In the opening five minutes, Tarantino has established his exercise in homage by referencing almost every single of the aforementioned film genres and placing it into the frame work of the classic “revenge story”.
The film follows the former hit woman simply known as “the Bride” on her quest for revenge. Left for dead, following the murder of her husband and unborn child by her former employer Bill and associates Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Budd (Michael Madsen), and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), the Bride awakens from a four year coma with a mission to wipe out all those who turned against her.
Utilizing this simple plot vehicle, Tarantino uses the film for the simple purpose of playing homage to the films that inspired him in his own style. For example, during the film’s climatic fight scene between the Bride and O-Ren Ishii, Tarantino has the Bride wear the signature yellow jump suit from kung fu master Bruce Lee’s final film, Game of Death. Uma Thurman is no Bruce Lee but Tarantino gives her one of the fight scenes Lee would have died for. Lasting about a half hour, the “Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves” is one of the most pleasing pieces of eye candy to come about in modern cinema since the original Matrix. There are swords, flying kicks, maces, and massive amounts of blood.
Discussion of graphic violence in Tarantino films is not very uncommon. However, the majority of the time, Tarantino leaves the violence in an off screen space. For example, in Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino pans away from the psychotic Mr. Blonde cutting the ear off of the hostage cop. The audience sees the dismembered ear, but does not actually see the act. Tarantino, however, does not handle Kill Bill the same way. Instead, he handles it like the ultra-violent samurai and kung fu films that inspired him by taking the violence consistently over the top.
The first place Tarantino portrays this is in the anime sequence disclosing the origins of O-Ren Ishii. Had the segment been shot using real actors, it would have been sure to brand the film an NC-17 rating. One of the characters is murdered by impalement as O-Ren stands in front of him, arms stretched, letting her outline be painted on the wall with the spurts of blood. This gratuitous violence is also incredibly evident in the climatic showdown. While Tarantino shoots some of it in black and white and silhouette to dampen the graphic violence, there are still excessive amounts of blood shooting out of wounds resulting from numerous dismemberments and decapitations. However, Tarantino does not handle the violence seriously, giving it such a cartoonish feel that, while it is disturbing, the audience can not help but laugh while they cringe.
Theatre goers hoping for another Pulp Fiction are not going to find it in Kill Bill: Volume One. While it shares Tarantino’s taste in films, music, editorial and directorial techniques, and even lead actress, the tones of the two films are incredibly different. Pulp Fiction was an homage to the film noir and Kill Bill is an homage to about everything else. It was Tarantino living vicariously in Butch when he had him pick up the samurai sword in Pulp Fiction just as much as it was him utilizing Clarence to show the audience Sonny Chiba (who also plays a cameo in Kill Bill) films in the Tarantino scripted True Romance. Kill Bill takes those two scenes and gives the audience an entertaining, rich, and fun homage that is waiting for its conclusion in Kill Bill: Volume Two.
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