Kill Bill: The Whole Fuckin' Epic

I know I reviewed Vol. I when it first came out, but now that the Alamo Drafthouse has seen fit to show the whole thing in one sitting, I feel that I need to review it as it should have been shown to begin with: as one really long movie. But first, there’s one preview I want to get out of the way:

HERO–I saw this movie a few months ago on a really crappy video. And I don’t just mean it was crappy because it was video and not DVD. I mean it was really bad quality.

Even with the horrid quality of the video, this movie was beautiful.

It’s about an assassin (Jet Li) who goes to the King of Qin (Daoming Chen) to tell him that he has killed the King’s bitter enemies, Silver Spear (Donnie Yen), Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), Flying Dagger (Maggie Cheung) and their young ward, Moon (Zhang Ziyi). But his stories could be a web of lies.

The story is great, the visuals are beautiful and the action is amazing. Go see this movie when it comes out. (Ok, it’s already out of DVD, but it’s probably hard to find…and I can’t WAIT to see it on a big screen.) I’m hoping the Quentin didn’t let them cut it all to shit when they brought it over the pond.

Now, on with the killing of Bill.

I think we all know the story by now, but I’ll go over it real quick like.

The Bride (Uma Thurman) has been wronged. Not only has she been wronged, but she’s been killed. Her former employer, Bill (David Carradine) brought her old crew with him to her wedding and killed the entire party, including (she thinks) her unborn daughter.

Unfortunately for Bill and his pals that last bullet to the brain didn’t quite take. Instead it just puts her in a coma for four years. Now it’s her quest to get revenge on each one of them.

She makes her list and checks it twice. Then she moves from one member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), Ella Driver (Daryl Hannah), Budd (Michael Madsen) and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) are all on the list. And, of course, so is Bill.

The first half of the film is pretty much just wall to wall carnage with the occasional pit-stop for some storyline. (There’s a pretty kick-ass anime section that deals with O-Ren’s back story.)

The second half, though, is a little less visceral. It deals with the relationships between the characters, especially between The Bride and Bill. We learn a lot more about why she is on this bloody rampage and why Bill is so conflicted about it now. We also learn where The Bride got her killer skills in a great sequence with Gordon Liu (who played Johnny Mo in the first half) as master Pai Mei.

The acting is just as good as Tarantino always seems to get out of his actors. Uma has probably never been better than as the blood splattered Bride bent on positively, absolutely killing every motherfucker in her way. Carradine, well, he hasn’t been seen much lately, but he is also excellent. And it’s definitely the best performances out of Madsen and Hannah. Lucy is how she always is: strong and not so subtle. But she’s great.

Since the first half didn’t have a whole lot of dialogue there wasn’t much of a chance for those clever little Quentin-isms that we all loved from Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. (Well, there was, “My name is Buck, and I’m here to fuck”, but he didn’t write that. It’s from Tobe Hooper’s second movie, Eaten Alive.) The second half, though has PLENTY of dialogue. Maybe a bit too much at times, but it doesn’t ruin the movie at all because it’s all important. I never felt like I was being talked at.

But it’s the ballet of death that we were all in that theatre for. Of course her fight against the Crazy 88s and O-Ren is amazing. We all knew that. But I also really liked her Raising Arizona-esque fight with Elle where they are fighting in a trailer that is just barely too small for a fight.

Hell, ALL of the fight scenes are amazing.

There’s another truly amazing thing about this film that I didn’t even think about unfortunately until I read it in a New York Times review.

The East and the West have been tied together, mixed up and reformed so much that they are almost identical now. Americans made Westerns, which influenced Akira Kurosawa. In turn, his films influenced Sergio Leone’s Westerns. The East is still influencing American film through Hong Kong and their gangster films. Tarantino has been aping them since Reservoir Dogs.

Now he’s finally made a film that took both worlds, brought them together and made them one. The first half of the film is full of references to Eastern films. Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu, the Shaw Brothers, Lone Wolf And Cub, Charlie Chan, O-Ren…there’s too much to mention or for one person (besides Tarantino) to know. The second half evokes John Ford, Budd Boetticher, Leone, Nicholas Ray…once again too much to mention here.

I was reading that article thinking about what a poser I am for not noticing more of those references. Then I thought, “Wait a minute! I haven’t spent my WHOLE life watching obscure movies and feeding off of their energy. That’s only been the last 6 or seven years of my life. I’ve got plenty of time to catch up and be a complete loser!”

Needless to say, this film amazed me. Everything about it. I think it may be his best yet. Pulp Fiction was a fucking powerhouse, but this blows it away.

I don’t know how I managed to wait so long to see the second part. I don’t know how ANY serious film lover waited. But wait we did. (Fuck Miramax for doing that to us.) But the wait is over and we have a film that any filmmaker would be proud to call his own.

Now all we have to do is wait for Kill Bill, Vol. 3. You know it’s coming. It may be years away, but it’s coming.

For now, though, I’ll just settle for Inglorious Bastards.