Kill Bill is the fourth film by writer-director Quentin Tarantino. Originally conceived as one film, it was released in two separate volumes (in Autumn 2003 and Spring 2004) due to its running time of approximately four hours. The movie is an epic-length revenge drama, with homages to earlier film genres, such as Hong Kong martial arts movies, Japanese samurai movies and Italian spaghetti westerns; an extensive use of popular music and pop culture references; and deliberate over-the-top violence.
Plot
Kill Bill is one story, divided into two volumes with five “chapters” each, presented in a nonlinear style (as is common among Tarantino’s films).
Volume 1
The Bride (Thurman) is introduced to the audience in a blood-spattered wedding gown immediately after a violent massacre at an El Paso wedding chapel. She attempts to tell her would-be killer, Bill (Carradine), that she is pregnant with his baby, but he shoots her in the side of her head. The Bride is then left to die.
Four years later, The Bride arrives at the house of Jeannie Bell, aka Vernita Green (Fox), code-named “Copperhead” of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Green opens the door with a smile, only to have The Bride engage her in a vicious fight, destroying her living room. Vernita’s four-year-old daughter Nikki arrives home from school, abruptly pausing the fight until she is taken to her room. In the kitchen over coffee, Vernita appeals to The Bride, apologizing for betraying her and asking for mercy on behalf of her family. The Bride coldly refuses, and the two agree to a knife fight later that evening. Green then, however, attempts to shoot The Bride with a concealed gun; she misses, and The Bride kills her by throwing a knife into her chest. Nikki witnesses the fight, and The Bride tells her that she’s sorry for killing her mother in front of her, and that if the young girl wishes to avenge her death when she grows up, The Bride will be waiting. The Bride then leaves in an inexplicably customized yellow pick-up truck.
A flashback to the events after the wedding reveals that the comatose Bride is the only survivor of the wedding chapel massacre. Deadly Viper Elle Driver (Hannah), code-named “California Mountain Snake”, the one-eyed assassin who has replaced The Bride as Bill’s lover, slips into the hospital ward intending to inject poison into The Bride’s intravenous line. She is stopped at the last second by Bill via cell phone, who believes The Bride deserves a more honorable death.
The Bride wakes up from her coma in the present and is horrified to discover she is no longer pregnant. She escapes from the hospital after killing an orderly named Buck, who has been selling sexual access to her body as she lay comatose. She steals Buck’s customized truck, the “Pussy Wagon”, and hides in the back seat as she slowly works her legs out of atrophy. The Bride travels to Okinawa to obtain a katana from Hattori Hanzō (Chiba), a renowned swordsmith, who has retired to the life of a sushi chef. Though Hanzo has taken an oath to never make another sword, The Bride is able to convince him of the merit of her mission after she drops the name Bill, and he forges for her the best sword he has ever created.
The Bride narrates an anime short depicting the back story to another Deadly Viper, O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), code-named Cottonmouth. O-Ren rose to the top of the Japanese crime world as well as working as a highly paid assassin. The segment introduces her personal bodyguard Gogo Yubari (Kuriyama), her friend and lawyer Sofie Fatale (another protege of Bill, played by Julie Dreyfus), and Johnny Mo (Gordon Liu), leader of O-Ren’s personal army, the Crazy 88.
The Bride tracks O-Ren to a hangout called the “House of Blue Leaves”, where a band (The 5,6,7,8’s) is performing. The Bride arrives wearing a yellow motorcycle jump suit (a homage to Bruce Lee movies), taking Fatale hostage and cutting off Fatale’s arm in public to lure O-Ren from her dinner. O-Ren sends Yubari and dozens of the Crazy 88 to deal with The Bride. She dispatches them all in a bloody sword fight, then turns her attention to O-Ren, climaxing in a dramatic sword fight in a snowy garden (which borrows from the Japanese sexploitation film Sex & Fury). After crossing swords several times, O-Ren is scalped by The Bride with her Hattori Hanzō sword.
The film ends with The Bride telling a dismembered Fatale to tell Bill she is looking for him, before dumping Fatale at a hospital. Bill is heard talking with Fatale at the hospital, revealing that The Bride’s daughter is, unbeknownst to her, and the audience, still alive.
Volume 2
Volume 2 opens with “The Massacre at Two Pines”, taking place a few minutes before the events that open the first volume. Bill tracks down The Bride and her friends as they are gathered for her wedding rehearsal. He is polite and mild-mannered, and even consents to The Bride introducing him as her father to the groom. The Bride begs Bill in private to be able to move on past her assassin life, and Bill seemingly consents. She takes her place at the altar as the other four Deadly Vipers arrive at the chapel, weapons in tow, and kill everyone at the rehearsal.
In the present, Bill ventures to the California desert to talk to his brother Budd, code-named “Sidewinder” (Madsen), another former Deadly Viper. Bill warns him that The Bride will come for him next. Budd, now overweight and alcoholic, has put his assassin days behind him, lives in a trailer and works as a bouncer at a local strip club, abused by the management.
The Bride arrives at Budd’s trailer that night to take his life. Anticipating her entry, Budd shoots her in the chest with rock salt the moment she opens his door, then injects her with a sedative. Budd calls Elle Driver and offers to sell her The Bride’s Hanzō sword for one million dollars. Budd then gives The Bride a “Texas funeral”, burying her alive with a flashlight in someone else’s grave.
As she lies in her grave, The Bride remembers her early training in China, when Bill took her to the temple of legendary martial arts master Pai Mei (an example of the elderly martial arts master stock character), who used cruelty as a tool for discipline and obedience. Pai Mei could perform a fatal attack called the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique[3] [4] [5], which is so secret that he has not even taught it to Bill. Although he “hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women”, he takes The Bride in, and molds her into a formidable fighter. He brutally trains her and she eventually gains his silent respect. In the present, The Bride calls on Pai Mei’s training to break out of the coffin and claw her way up to freedom.
The Bride arrives back at Budd’s trailer to see Elle Driver arriving. Elle hands Budd a suitcase containing his money for the sword; the suitcase also contains a hidden black mamba, the deadly snake that shares The Bride’s code name. The snake bites Budd in the face, and while he lies paralyzed and dying, Elle explains she regretted The Bride’s demise at Budd’s hands, and that The Bride deserved a better end. After Budd succumbs to the venom, Bill calls Elle; Elle tells him that The Bride killed Budd, and that she then killed The Bride, and tells him the location of the final resting place of Beatrix Kiddo — revealing The Bride’s real name for the first time (several characters previously called her “Kiddo”, a common pet name in America; previous utterances of her full name by Vernita and O-Ren were bleeped out). As Elle leaves Budd’s trailer, Beatrix, who was watching them from a nearby ridge, attacks her with a flying kick. Elle uses Beatrix’s own sword against her, but Beatrix finds Budd’s Hattori Hanzō sword in his closet, which Elle believed Budd had sold. As they fight to a standstill, Beatrix asks Elle why Pai Mei (who also taught Elle) snatched out her eye. Elle tells her that she called Pai Mei a “miserable old fool” and he plucked out her eye. As revenge, she poisoned and killed the elderly master. The two charge each other, clash, and Beatrix plucks out Elle’s remaining eye, crushes it underfoot and departs, leaving the blinded Elle in the trailer with the same black mamba that killed Budd. Elle’s fate is left unknown; in the credits, while all the other members of The Bride’s “Death List Five” are listed as dead, her status is marked merely as “?”.
Beatrix travels to Mexico and visits Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks), an old pimp who raised Bill from childhood. He forthrightly tells her Bill’s whereabouts, explaining to a puzzled Beatrix that Bill would have wanted him to. When she finally finds Bill, she is shocked to find that B.B., her four-year-old daughter, is alive and apparently expecting her mother’s return. The family spends the evening together peacefully, and B.B. falls asleep watching the chambara film Shogun Assassin in her mother’s arms.
With B.B. safely in bed, Beatrix confronts Bill. Bill shoots her with a dart filled with truth serum; Beatrix is forced to reveal that, when she discovered her pregnancy and decided not to abort, she thereafter had to put her unborn daughter’s future above Bill. Bill questions if she will truly save her daughter’s future by taking her away from Bill and killing him.
The estranged couple sit down at a table outside, and when Beatrix insists that she complete her unfinished business, Bill draws his sword to attack her. Beatrix dodges his attack and draws her own sword, but Bill succeeds in disarming her. He thrusts to stab her with his sword, but she catches it in her Hanzo sheath and disables Bill with the “Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique”, taught to her without Bill’s or the audience’s knowledge. Bill, defeated, says a tender goodbye and takes five silent steps to his death. Beatrix sheds a few tears at the death of her lover, and returns to the house to collect her daughter. As the movie ends, B.B. is watching cartoons in a motel while Beatrix sobs on the bathroom floor. As the Bride returns to watch cartoons with B.B., the movie ends. The exit quote on the screen is: “The lioness has rejoined her cub. All is right in the jungle.”
Cast
Actor  |
Role |
Vol. 1 |
Vol. 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uma Thurman | Beatrix Kiddo / Black Mamba / The Bride | • | • |
| David Carradine | Bill / Snake Charmer | • | • |
| Vivica A. Fox | Vernita Green / Copperhead / Jeannie Bell | • | |
| Daryl Hannah | Elle Driver / California Mountain Snake | • | • |
| Lucy Liu | O-Ren Ishii / Cottonmouth | • | |
| Michael Madsen | Budd / Sidewinder | • | • |
| Julie Dreyfus | Sofie Fatale | • | |
| Chiaki Kuriyama | Gogo Yubari | • | |
| Sonny Chiba | Hattori Hanzō | • | • |
| Gordon Liu (Liu Chia-Hui) | Johnny Mo Pai Mei |
• | • |
| Michael Parks | Earl McGraw Esteban Vihaio |
• | • |
| Michael Bowen | Buck | • | |
| Jun Kunimura | Boss Tanaka | • | |
| Christopher Allen Nelson | Tommy Plympton | • | • |
| Bo Svenson | Reverend Harmony | • | |
| Samuel L. Jackson | Rufus | • | |
| Larry Bishop | Larry Gomez | • | |
| Laura Cayouette | Rocket | • | |
| Perla Haney-Jardine | B.B. | • | |
| Ambrosia Kelley | Nikki Bell | • | |
| Helen Kim | Karen Kim | • |
Influences
The overall storyline of Kill Bill—a woman seeks revenge on a group of people, crossing them off a list one by one as she kills them—is adapted from Lady Snowblood, a 1973 Japanese film in which a woman kills off the gang who murdered her family. The Guardian commented that Lady Snowblood was “practically a template for the whole of Kill Bill Vol. 1″.[6]
The plot is quite similar to François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black (1968) in which five men make a young bride a widow on her wedding day. She takes her revenge, methodically killing each of the five men using various methods.
Kill Bill pays tribute to film genres including the spaghetti western, blaxploitation, Chinese “wuxia” and Japanese martial arts films, and kung fu movies of the ’60s and ’70s. This last genre, which was largely produced by the Shaw Brothers, is given an obvious nod by the inclusion of the Shaw Scope logo at the beginning of Kill Bill Vol. 1.
One influential exploitation film that Tarantino has mentioned in interviews is the Swedish Thriller - en grym film, released in the U.S. as They Call Her One Eye. Tarantino recommended that actress Daryl Hannah watch the movie to prepare for her role as the one-eyed killer Elle Driver.[7]
The Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub series of Manga and films are echoed in the characters of The Bride and her daughter. The Americanized version of this series, Shogun Assassin, is actually viewed by the two characters.
Awards
Each film was nominated at the Golden Globe Awards. Uma Thurman received a Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama nomination in 2004 and 2005 for her work in Volume 1 and Volume 2. David Carradine received a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 2005 for his work in Kill Bill: Volume 2. The film was very popular at the MTV Movie Awards. At the 2004 MTV Movie Awards Uma Thurman won Best Female performance for Volume 1, Lucy Liu won for Best Villain in Volume 1, and the fight between The Bride and Gogo Yubari won Best Fight. At the 2005 MTV Movie Awards, Kill Bill Volume 2 was nominated for best movie, Thurman was nominated for best female performance, and the fight between The Bride and Elle Driver in Kill Bill Volume 2 also won Best Fight. Uma Thurman also received a Saturn Award for Best Actress in 2003 for her work in Volume 1.
