The key to Quentin Tarantino's unique style and vision for his Kill Bill
series, and most especially for Volume 2, is his taste for consummate killers
and his desire to present them as complex human beings. This works as well
as it does because he gets the most skilled of them on our side and makes it
clear, through a succession of stylized scenes borrowing from epic sources in
film genres, that in every encounter she's up against her match and can take
as much bodily destruction as she renders, and then some. Ouch! Making his
insistent survivor as athletic as she is gorgeous is another vital part of
the formula. Which is not to say it's formulaic except within his own
inventory of mind and body of work.
When last we saw "The Bride," aka Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), whose real name
we learn in this episode, she was shot by ex-lover Bill (David Carradine)
smack in the face, as far as we can tell. Making a continuation of her saga
possible is the fact that people sometimes get over this kind of insult to
their physical well-being, extremely life-threatening though it may be. In
her case, she lapsed into a mult-year coma and came out of it in time to make
this part of her drama by resuming her quest to eradicate the malicious
bastard in revenge. To get back to him, however, after having dispensed with
O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and her horde, and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) in
Volume 1, there remain two other threats who must be eliminated, like the
cooly sardonic "Sidewinder" Budd (Michael Madsen) and the viciously deceptive
Elle Driver, aka California Mountain Snake (Daryl Hannah).
Back when Bride and Bill were an item, he made the possibly lethal mistake of
arranging for her final training under the tutelage of martial arts legend,
Pai Mei (Chia Hui Liu). This long bearded monk has moves that are not
restrained by gravitational force and techniques of deadly power that include
the rarely used four-point heart burst attack which, when applied, leaves the
subject four steps before absolute death. Acquiring this skill is like
achieving the killer app for a programmer. It could be as important to her
goal as the priceless sword made for her by Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), the
artistry of which is much revered by all involved.
When Bill shows up at The Bride's wedding in a small town church where Samuel
L. Jackson is the organ player and where she's been in hiding because her
pregnancy by Bill has changed her killer instincts, she is finally dressed in
a wedding gown. He seems to be giving her a reprieve until his Deadly Viper
Assassination Squad appears for a blood bath. He's not about to accept her
new life and withdrawal from his own. Her small town groom is a victim, but
The Bride survives as does her quest, now with even more conviction, as
though it needed a boost.
The swordplay in this last segment of the second-parter is extremely toned
down, reserving intense rounds of combat for the primary meetups and time for
extended dialogue scenes in which characters and their motivations are as
fully explored and expressed as mastermind Tarantino wanted them to be.
You'd think that in an action piece in which people come to see the quick and
violent carving of bodies, a long expose of character-delineation in very
extended moments would drag the pace to a crawl, but these are encounters
where we learn much about the spirit and thinking that has animated the
action. They don't work as pauses in the action but a furthering of the
themes that have been lurking in the minds of the people who have been too
busy to get them out. These are moments of final discovery -- for them as
well as for us. When Bill and The Bride have a final sitdown, he says that
he has two questions for her. The audience becomes spellbound as he slowly
works his way through his thought process. The very fact of having these
arch enemies precede mortal combat with detailed palaver is a quite
interesting groove for a movie to take. In any one else's hand such a
maneuver would be highly risky, but here it's the intentional expression of a
filmmaker who knows the medium and his audience.
He constantly creates payoff moments where the reading of a line is all
important for a sparkling dramatic point. Wait'll you get to the instant
when The Bride asks for a glass of water... you'll see what I mean.
The Tarantino cast is well designed to pull all these nuances of detail and
motive off with incisive flair. Just as he gave a successfully well-rounded
Bruce Willis a personna with an unexpected dimension in "Pulp Fiction," his
use of Thurman and, even more so, Carradine, seems to have created an
elevation in acting stature and accomplishment. He has tuned these parts so
well to the nature of his actors that the thought of awards becomes
inescapable. The same might be said as well for the eye-patched Hannah
finding new assurance as a lethal amazon, and the slyly treacherous
Madsen.
David Carradine, in interviews, points out that "Kill Bill" is not about good
guys and bad guys. "They're all bad," he says. The Tarantino hero, however,
is the bad guy with the sympathetic edge. The wronged hit-woman becomes an
avenging angel. Stylistically, this is more animation than comic strip but,
as live action, it's a vivid creation for film fans who enjoy a little
stretch of the imagination muscles and the willingness to go where Tarantino
so adventurously propels them. I don't think it's fan frenzy or worshipful
idolatry to say that if interest in movies declined, he'd be the man to keep
the flame of celluloid magic burning.
See Volume 1
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~~ Jules Brenner