Kill Bill Vol 1, 2 - Movie Profile

March 24th, 2008 · No Comments · Tagged as Guy Movies · Movie Posters

Kill Bill Vol 1 - movie poster
Movie: Kill Bill I, II.
Released: 2003, 2004.
IMDB rank: 8.2, 8.1.
IMDB link.

Notes: Director Quentin Tarantino shows up in a lot of the movies in this list, but I feel that Kill Bill shows more of the inner workings of his mind than any other. Despite the intentional kung fu and 70s exploitation spoof humor, and the partial comic book-like animation for a few sequences, there’s also a serious, introspective thread, and the two combined make the movies that much more entertaining. They intentionally have the low-budget feel that Tarantino likes so much (and fans, too, obviously).

Watch both movies together, for best effect, and to get a sense of all the story elements that are not cleared up in Vol 1. For example, who is The Bride (Uma Thurman), what is her relationship to Bill (whom we don’t actually see until Vol 2.), what happened to her during her four years of coma, etc. The Bride, in narration, does partly explain, her career as an assassin, who took out the wedding party, and that person’s career as an assassin.

There are a lot of well-thought camera angles, but one of the most strangely beautiful is the battle between The Bride and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), in a Japanese garden, with snow gently falling. But just prior to that scene, when they’re fighting, the music is decidely non-Japanese, and before that, a Japanese girl band plays American surf music. It’s this fusion (Tarantino’s own word) of genre elements that makes these two movies so entertaining.

Director: Quentin Tarantino.
Categories: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller.
Writers: Quentin Tarantino, Uma Thurman (character: The Bride).
Cast: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, Samuel L. Jackson (vol 2).
Runtime: 111 min.

Trailer: