Films That Really Matter To Us: Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2

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For obvious reasons, I’ve listed both these films together. Apparently they were originally meant to be one film but it would have been too long – that’s why the full credits are at the end of the second one rather than the first. Anyway, I am by no means a connoisseur of Tarrantino films, I really enjoyed Pulp Fiction, but for me, it’s all about Kill Bill. A powerful female, amazing fight scenes, diverse cultures and of course, a bit of a freaky love story is essentially what this film is about to me.

I could wax lyrical about how cool Uma Thurman is in Kill Bill. In fact, I think I will! I mean, imagine how cool she was in Pulp Fiction and then times it by a thousand and you’re not even close! OK I know a cocaine addict overdosing on heroin is not someone I should be looking up to… neither, for that matter is a incredibly violent woman who goes on the rampage, killing people for revenge but seriously, she’s really cool. I guess I just like films where a girl is kicking ass for once. I think that’s it, yeah, I just liked the fact that you had an intelligent, strong female character participating in cold blooded revenge against the people who tried to assassinate her – including her ex. I think she’s pretty justified, don’t you?

The Crazy 88 are no match for The Bride's samurai sword

When I first watched Kill Bill, one of the things I thought might put me off is the amount of graphic violence in the films. There is a lot of violence in the Kill Bill films, as you would expect – it’s a Tarrantino film, anything less than a bit of gore is unacceptable! But the fight scenes are just so cool. Take the bit near the end of the first film when ‘The Bride’ (you don’t find out her name until the second film) fights the Crazy 88 and it’s just a bloodbath, but there’s some awesome use of colour/black and white switches, and some pretty nifty stunt work too. Te first film is very violent and there is little dialogue – it mainly focuses on The Bride’s quest to kill O-Ren Ishii, one of the assassins who put her in a coma, with a bit of a quest to get the best samurai sword ever made along the way.

By the time the first film ends and she still hasn’t killed Bill, you immediately want to watch the second one. It is not disappointing. Poor old Uma still has 3 people left to kill – Buddy, Elle and, of course, Bill. The second film is not set in Japan (as most of the first one is), but is almost a western. The contrast in the 2 films is really good: O-Ren Ishii, boss of the Japanese underworld compared with Buddy who lives in a trailer somewhere in Texas. While it doesn’t have as much fighting as the first film, there is very cool fight scene between The Bride and Elle in Buddy’s trailer. However, my favourite part of the film is the flashback sequence to The Bride’s training with Pai Mei, a mysterious Chinese martial arts master. He provides some light comic relief before effortlessly demonstrating his skills to The Bride who becomes eager to learn from him.

Volume 2 has a lot more dialogue and explains the entire back story so the audience’s questions about what happened to make Bill want to kill The Bride so much and what happened to her baby. By the end of the film it’s taken you on an emotional journey that’s actually pretty intense.

I don’t think it’s really spoiling it to tell you that she does kill Bill, I’ll leave all the details out, but if you haven’t seen the two Kill Bill films, what have you been doing with your life?!