MOVIE: KILL BILL

by BRAD SHELTON

Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film, Kill Bill, is one of the most exciting, creative and energetic movie ever made. Like the way Star Wars created a trend and following for space movies, Tarantino has developed the same for Kung Fu films.

Kill Bill starts off with our heroine, Black Mamba (Uma Thurman) she is set on a path of revenge. She takes it to the suburban house of Vernita Green (Vivica Fox). A former agent for Bill(David Carradine), and was part of the failed attempt to knock off the Black Mamba. The fight scene between the two is physical, yet very funny. The situation gets more unusual when Vernita’s daughter walks in on the fight.

Kill Bill follows in a similar out-of-sequence structure that Pulp Fiction pioneered. The revenge plot of Vernita Green is shown on a checklist after the death of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), who is later in a battle scene with Thurman.

After the battle with Vernita, Tarantino develops how the Black Mamba’s reason for revenge was created. In this sequence we are introduced to a few of the villains that Thurman has fought and will fight, thus leading us to the Black Mamba on a search for O-Ren Ishii.

The story goes international as the Black Mamba travels to Tokyo to battle it out with Ishii, a former agent turned crime lord. We are introduced to how Ishii became the villain that she is with a segment showed in Japanamation. This scene does a fantastic job of not only devolping the story, but breaking traditional rules and throwing animation into a live film. With the Black Mamba in search, we get prepared for one of the best fight sequences ever filmed.

In the final fight scene, Tarantino does perfectly what the Wachowski brothers tried so hard to do in The Matrix Reloaded: one hero, in this case, heroine and dozens upon dozens of villains, engaged in one gigantic fight scene. And to make this scene even more special, Tarantino throws in one of the most intriguing characters ever created, Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama), O-Ren Ishii’s teenage bodyguard, gets introduced as an innocent-looking school girl with a temper for destruction. She is without a doubt Thurman’s biggest competition in the entire film. Her weapon skill with the mace and chain, only makes us wonder how she became who she is and why.

If there has ever been a character who needs a spin off, it’s her. And with her introduction to the Black Mamba, an amazing fight scene only gets better.

Tarantino does so many right things in this film that other directors should try using. He made an action movie with an almost entirely female cast, which Charlie’s Angels tried and failed miserably. The reason for Tarantino’s achievement was his ability to create the women’s fighting actions to be very similar to that of a man’s. Both Thurman’s character and Lui’s character show that a women’s strength can be just as brutal as a man’s. Tarantino also creates a mystery within each character, which makes us curious enough to not only see Kill Bill Volume 2 but hope for more.