Movie

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)

In Quentin Tarantino’s two-volume revenge saga, the men do the talking while women fight to the death. Often violent and bloody, but what do you expect when the protagonist is a deadly assassin and her former cohort are the targets? Uma Thurman’s Bride is left for dead at a wedding rehearsal, but the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad should have finished her when they had the chance.

Ten chapters are split across two films, presented out of order. The first target we see is actually the Bride’s second: Vernita Green, aka Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox). She’s enjoying retirement in suburban America, but that doesn’t earn her any sympathy. She and the Bride fight each other and wreck the furniture in an even contest before Vernita’s little girl shows up, and the killers put their feud on hold. A brief pause before Copperhead draws a concealed gun. It’s a bad idea to miss the target, especially a woman armed with a throwing knife.

Moving back in time, Texas cops investigate the wedding chapel aftermath and the supposedly dead Bride, who turns out to be alive. Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) is a psycho assassin, so she’s not pleased when Bill (David Carradine, though we don’t see his face) says it’s not chivalrous to kill a woman in a coma. Skip forward four years, and the Bride wakes up with a metal plate in her skull and a vendetta against the hit squad who killed her fiancé.

The four-hour saga (counting both films) is overlong with lots of dialogue. The Bride has a samurai sword made by a Japanese master smith, but did we need five minutes where she pretends to be an innocent Yankee tourist? He survives and should consider himself lucky. Most men (and women) are treated as expendable, often with fancy camera angles and tinted palettes to add variety to their demises. A handful of characters put up a worthy fight, but most last fewer than ten seconds.

While the solo female antagonists might just scrape legendary status, the ensemble trio of villainesses are worthy of a top fifteen ranking. And the Bride is a one-woman army, firmly in antihero territory.

Villainesses

O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama)

As the final boss of Volume 1 – using a video game analogy – O-Ren Ishii gets a badass introduction. Actually, three of them. First is an animated backstory that shows revenge against the Yakuza boss who murdered her parents, her rise as an assassin, and the wedding attack that made her the first target. The cartoon is as violent as the live-action segments. For those eager for “real” action, that comes soon enough when O-Ren decapitates a crime lord who refuses to fall in line. That ends all dissent and establishes the villainess as truly ruthless.

In Tokyo, there’s a montage of the Bride wearing a yellow jumpsuit on a motorcycle while O-Ren rides in a limousine flanked by her biker enforcers. A voice-over narration introduces the key lieutenants. These are the domino-masked leader of the Crazy 88 gang, timid assistant Sofie Fatale, and the far more deadly and sadistic Gogo. For O-Ren’s third introduction (we get she’s a badass), she enters her club with her minions close behind as epic music plays.

The final chapter of Volume 1 is a half hour long action sequence where the Bride takes on all comers. Like any crime boss, O-Ren has a horde of disposable goons. After the Bride chops off Sofie’s arm, one poor guy is sent in alone and routinely dispatched as the villainess watches from the balcony. Then come a few more guys, none of them any good. There’s a female in their ranks, but she doesn’t last much longer.

It’s not until Gogo steps forward that the Bride has any competition. As the only henchwoman with an introductory flashback, it’s obvious the ball and chain wielding psycho will be more difficult to defeat. After a lengthy opening attack where Gogo demolishes the club decor, she disarms the Bride and gets her in a chain chokehold. The Bride is equal to the challenge and improvises with a block of wood (and sharp protruding nails) to kill her opponent.

There’s a humorous interlude where O-Ren gloats it won’t be that easy before more masked thugs arrive. Most of the Bride’s carnage is shot in black and white, but the violence isn’t toned down. Plenty of people lose arms and legs, but don’t land a single blow against their well-trained adversary. Even the leader dies quickly, knocked from the upper balcony after the Bride slices off his leg. O-Ren walks away mid-fight, almost as if she expects her foe to kill her underlings. The villainess even admits this when the bloody victor steps into a snowy exterior landscape to confront the boss lady.

After all the buildup, don’t expect a great battle. It’s stylish enough – with the two swordswomen circling about each other as the tempo raises – but few blows are traded. O-Ren is a worthy match and slashes the Bride in the back. After a few more moves, it’s the crime boss’ turn to get cut, only this swipe cleaves off her scalp. O-Ren has just enough time to acknowledge the victory before she collapses dead in the snow.

My prevailing thought: “Is that it?” I suspect many other villainess fans will feel the same. So brilliant up to the last encounter, but ultimately a letdown.

Honourable Mentions: Kill Bill / Stylish Assassins

Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) – Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah)

While the first volume had 50% action, there’s barely 5% in the second half. The Bride has three targets remaining. Budd (Michael Madsen) is a washed-out hitman living in a trailer, and Bill has become a family man fond of lengthy conversations. Once more, it’s the females that deliver the excitement. If this summary seems brief, there’s not much to discuss despite the movie being over two hours long. Even a minor character – an Asian assassin whom the Bride talks down by revealing she’s pregnant – gets more action than Bill, who’s killed by a death touch.

Yes, the final boss fight never materialises. The movie subverts expectations, and skilled assassins achieve victory over superior opponents by cheating. The Bride – decked out in ninja garb – confronts Budd, only to get shot and buried alive in the desert. It’s a good thing she listened to her brutal sensei and can bust her way out of a wooden box.

The treacherous Elle murders Budd – who she could easily kill in a fair fight – by planting a snake in a bag of money. There’s a chilling scene where the assassin lists the symptoms of the poisonous venom, then the Bride returns and the proper fight begins. Elle has the sword and the advantage, but the Bride is a tough woman to take down. Like most locations where female assassins battle it out, the trailer ends up destroyed.

Telling a vengeful killer you murdered her old mentor is not the smartest play, and the Bride responds to Elle’s confession by plucking out her remaining eye. The anti-heroine leaves the blind woman alone with her pet snake, but the villainess’ fate is left to the imagination.

Guns, Girls and Gambling (2012) – The Blonde (Helena Mattson)

Not a Tarantino film, even though it pretends to be. Weird characters populate this “man caught in a gang war” tale, all introduced with title cards so we know who they are. Cowboys and Indians is a prominent theme (two assassins even go by those names), and there’s a modern western feel. Two bosses – The Chief (Gordon Tootoosis) and The Rancher (Powers Boothe) – fight over a tribal warrior mask stolen by a gang of Elvis impersonators. Yes, this movie is just as crazy as it sounds.

The man in the middle is John Smith (Christian Slater), and there are also appearances by Jeff Fahey as the double revolver-toting Cowboy, Gary Oldman as the ringleader Elvis Elvis, and Megan Park as the sweet Girl Next Door. Except she’s faking it, naturally. Plenty of people die before the final showdown is done, with minor characters biting the dust before the more important players.

The deadliest assassin is the unnamed Blonde, who recites Edgar Allan Poe before blowing her victims away. This woman – dressed in black and the subject of frequent sexy rear shots – is the coolest character, skilled in acrobatics and firearms. She emerges unscathed from her bloody encounters, escapes double-crosses, and rides off into the sunset with her prostitute accomplice and a suitcase full of money. Everyone else is on the losing side, except for John Smith, who played everyone from the start.

The Blonde’s standout moments are assassinating a man in a toilet cubicle (!) and besting the Indian who brings a tomahawk to a gunfight. In a movie full of corpses, this female assassin has the highest body count. So John Smith wisely lets the Blonde and her leather-clad lover keep their share.