October 9-15, 2003

movies

Death Wears a Yellow Jumpsuit

Katana mama: Uma Thurman gets medieval in Kill Bill: Volume 1.

Kill Bill is both stylish and smart.

by Cindy Fuchs

You don't know the name of The Bride (Uma Thurman). You do know that she's the No. 1 killer in Kill Bill: Volume 1, that she used to be called Black Mamba, back in the days when she killed for Bill (David Carradine), as part of a crew called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS). You know Bill tried to kill her in Texas, that she was pregnant at the time, that it was her wedding day. But you don't know her name.

It hardly matters. The Bride has awakened from a four-year coma, and spends the duration of Kill Bill hunting down and killing her enemies. That is the plot and that is her character, distilled and intangible, singular and unfathomable. Indeed, The Bride is offered as a kind of essence of cinema, the vital baseline of vengeance, meticulous brutality, balletic violence and urgent, endless tragedy. Granted, the concept is as abstract and pretentious as any Tarantino has conjured, but in practice, Thurman is so utterly physical in her every moment on screen that you can't help but feel for her.

The Bride first appears in a tight black-and-white close-up, her face bruised and welted, slick with sweat and blood. Bill leans down to wipe her cheek, tenderly. Do you find me sadistic? he asks, then asserts, There is nothing sadistic in my actions. This is me at my most masochistic. Cut to opening credits: The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino (in case anyone's keeping count). But if QT identifies with her tormentor, he identifies with his girl protagonist as well: He tells The New York Times, It just hurts more to see two women fighting.

As its title announces, the new movie is knowingly, gloriously violent, a series of fight scenes functioning as dance numbers in a musical -- they build as much character as the film will allow. Tarantino explains it to Vibe's Harry Allen: An action sequence well done on film is like listening to a symphony. And when the symphony builds up to a certain point, it explodes. That's why you go to the symphony. And that's why you go to an action movie, to thrill to the art. Even if the rationale sounds self-serving, the point is raucously illustrated in Kill Bill, which features one explosion after another (limbs hacked off, blood gushing, heads soaring through the night air); this series of climaxes is punctuated by occasional, exceedingly delicate pauses in the action, as well as in RZA's perfect, sinuous score.

While her rhythms are accelerated, The Bride recalls Leone's Man With No Name, in anonymity, reluctance and relentlessness. At the same time, she is fundamentally different, compelled by the loss of her baby and gender-specific violations that lead to precisely calculated paybacks, haunted by regret even as she exacts her justice. When The Bride wakes from her coma in a hospital and learns her comatose body has been pimped out by a scuzzy orderly (Mike Bowen), apparently for years, retribution is swift and horrifically fitting; afterwards, she drives off in his cheesy yellow mini-pickup, the Pussy Wagon.

Breaking her quest into nonsequential chapters, volume one has The Bride visiting vengeance upon two (out of four) Vipers. Her first stop in the film (though second on her list of targets) is Pasadena, home of Vernita Green, formerly Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox) and now mother of a 4-year-old. Ferociously cut and choreographed (by Yuen Wo Ping and Sonny Chiba, who plays a ninjitsu master in another chapter), the throwdown is briefly interrupted by Nikki's return from school. As she steps inside (Mommy, I'm home), the combatants hide their shiny knives behind their backs, the camera low behind them to underscore the battle's fallout: shattered glass, smashed furniture, splattered blood. Vernita sends Nikki upstairs, and the women briefly pretend civility before the fight ends, horribly, the body left sprawled on the kitchen floor for the child to contemplate. Though The Bride insists, Your mother had it coming, she allows that the costs of killing can be severe: When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting.

The point is reinforced in the story of another adversary, O-Ren Ishii, a.k.a. Cottonmouth, Chinese-Japanese-American head of Tokyo's yakuza underworld. Rendered in spectacular anime by Production IG, this chapter shows O-Ren's primal trauma, hiding under her parents' bed during their grisly murders, her mother's blood dripping onto her face, each red drop sealing her own vengeance trip. When she grows up to be Lucy Liu, O-Ren takes on minions, including the chilling Sofi Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), the Kato-masked Johnny Mo (Gordon Liu) and especially the schoolgirl Go Go Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyami), whose skills with a mace ensure The Bride's excruciating pain during a 20-minute showdown at the House of Blue Leaves.

Ripping off and rearranging moves, ideas and codes from seemingly countless sources, Kill Bill is a smart film that looks glib. Violence fills up its flamboyant surface, but The Bride's pulse beats just below.

Kill Bill: Volume 1

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino A Miramax release Opens Friday at area theaters

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