KILL BILL VOLUME ONE movie review

“Bang Bang… he shot me down… bang bang… I hit the ground… bang bang… my baby shot me down…”

       Kill Bill is about the revenge of a bride on the assassin, Bill and his circle which is known as Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS). The bride, pregnant in white dress, takes a bullet in the head on her wedding day, an attempted whack by her former associates but unluckily for them she was merely comatose. Four years later, the Bride suddenly awakens from her coma and realizes what has been done to her. Then she sets out to take revenge on her assailants, writing a ''to kill'' list with their names on it. One by one, she kills the various members of the assassin group according to the difficulty to be killed and he saves Bill for last. In the Volume One, she kills Copperhead (Vernita Green) and Cottonmouth (O-Ren-Shii).

      In this movie, the director, Quentin Tarantino pays tribute to the old movies which some scenes will be familiar if you have watched those movies before. Each assassin from the squad is named by the name of poison snakes (California Mountain Snake, Cottonmouth, Copperhead and Black Mamba) and this idea is taken from the American classic comic, “Captain America”. In the comic, there is a “Serpent Society” which the members are also named in this way. 

      In the last fight which the Bride takes on 88 yakuza fighters and cut limbs and trunks like cutting fruits, feels as casual and elegant as a show-stopping musical number, the bride wears yellow jumpsuit which alludes to the one wore by Bruce Lee in his move “Game of Death”. 

      Other than that, the black masks worn by the fighters is the same as the one worn in Bruce Lee's TV series, The Green Hornet, as the director pay respect to the Hong Kong action movie star. Tarantino has cast veteran Japanese action star Sonny Chiba as a legendary sword-craftsman, and the role he play, Hattori Hanzo is a real samurai from 15th century, a real hero among the people at that time.

“Revenge is never a straight line. It's a forest, and like a forest it's easy to lose your way... To get lost... To forget where you came in, quoted from Hattori Hanzo.” 

Revenge is a cycle and it will never stop once it is initiated, this is what the movie is about. The first person on the list, Vernita is killed by the bride in front of Vernita’s daughter, Nikki. 

“It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I'm sorry. But you can take my word for it, your mother had it comin'. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting”, told by the unstoppable bride who is furious and sad upon on her dead child, to Nikki who had witnessed her mother stab by a knife. 

     Next person to be killed, O-Ren-Shii is a powerful woman in the Tokyo’s underground society and business. She, too, took revenge because she witnessed her parents being killed cruelty and showered by the blood of her mother when she was young. Luckily for me, who had enough of realistic killing and violent fighting scenes, this part is presented in anime. Although the killing of parents is more violent and cruel than before (stabbing of sword into the skull and on the body on the bed) but they are pictures and the audience is till made excited because the anime didn’t reduce the feeling of tension in the film.

      The background of O-Ren Ishii last weapon, Gogo, is unknown. At her age, she is no afraid to talk about sex and kill the person in the bar who is intended to have sex with her. In my opinion, this may be caused by her past experience and she join O-Ren Ishii because they share similarities. When the bride battles with Gogo, she solemnly offers a little girl her own future chance for violence. From here, we can see that although the bride is determined to revenge but she also hopes that the revenge can be stopped here.

   

       In the movie world created by the director, the bride makes her legs work through sheer willpower, blood flowing out from the body like fountain and she takes her sword into the plane as carry-on, and actually has it next to her seat! I was made uncomfortable by the cruel killing scene at the beginning of the movie, but when I start to get used to them, I start to enjoy watching it although I am not into movie like this. One thing I like the most about the movie is the music. What will the film like without the music? The music plays an important role in the movie as the tempo matches the tempo of those fighting scenes so well and it make those cruel and violence easily accepted by the audience. The exciting fighting acts created with the assistance of martial arts master, Yuen Wo-Ping combines with the music and made the fighting like dancing.

Here is the link to my favourite song from the soundtrack which is featured in the climax fight in the movie.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff-kQ-UmflA