Before “Salt,” before “Red Sparrow,” and before “Atomic Blonde,” there was The Bride.
“Kill Bill: Vol. 1” (2003) is a martial-arts action movie, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox and David Carradine. The movie earned a nomination for Uma Thurman in the 61st Golden Globe Awards for ‘Best Actress in a Motion Picture—Drama.’
For a revenge movie, “Kill Bill” is surprisingly very passionate but without emotions. The emotional experience of the movie is below freezing point. You will feel nothing for anyone—except admiration for their art of fighting. Where the cinegoer in me whimpered over lack of emotions and empathy, the feminist in me rejoiced. All the action scenes with female assassins were effortless. Even after seventeen years of its release, I am still waiting for an action movie with a female lead parallel to this one.
The movie started with a bloodbath at a church. A pregnant blood-spattered bride on the floor telling someone that it is your baby. The out-of-sight assassin didn’t bother with the plea and pulled the trigger.
The Bride, aka the Black Mamba, played by Uma Thurman, was an active assassin in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad before she decided to quit. The decision stemmed out of the fact that she was pregnant and wanted to have a family life. Unbeknowst to her, her past soon caught up with her just before the wedding and put bullets in her head.
Without offering any depth into the moral choices of the protagonist, the movie moved ahead like a bullet; lethal and unswerving. Fans may believe in the good-guy assassin who only kills to earn a living, psychologists would beg to differ. Killing people is not a job like drawing a curtain at an opera house. It surely messes up the worldview of the killer, starting but not limited to the belief in the sanctity of human life. For that very reason, Tarantino did not pose the character as a victim. There are no crying or teary justifications of actions. In the world of assassins, the only things that matter are actions and reactions. Introspection of the choices are left for bystanders, if they survive. Tarantino captured this impeccably as a mindful storyteller.
Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” (Miramax, 2003).
The Bride’s first target was Vernita Green, aka Copperhead, played by Vivicia A. Fox, who was living with her daughter. Despite promising her that she would not kill her in front of her daughter, The Bride ended up killing her the same way. The second chapter explored what happened to The Bride when she woke up from coma after four years.
First thing she noticed that she was not pregnant any more; the second thing that the hospital nurse was pimping her out taking advantage of her coma. After killing both the nurse and his client, she managed to cure herself from entropy and escaped from the hospital.
The story moved to the next member of the Squad i.e., O-Ren Ishii, aka Cottonmouth, played by Lucy Liu, who had become the rising star in Tokyo’s mafia. Her back story is shown in anime style to give it a Manga-appeal. Her story alone could have been the subject of a separate movie with the amount of details put into it.
Before heading to Tokyo, The Bride paid a visit to Hattori Hanzo, an old sword maker in Okinawa. When he refused to create another blood-shedding weapon, she reminded her to pay off his debt to humanity of teaching Bill by crafting a sword for her. Hattori Hanzo finally agreed to create a sword just for her which he considered the apex of his creative genius as it might be his last piece of art.
Finally, the Bride arrived for the showdown at the House of Blue Leaves. The fight sequences were well-crafted and well-layered taking up the heat level with each fight. The Bride’s fight with O-Ren’s gang, famously called the Crazy 88, was a feast for eyes and remained iconic for the years to come. In Bruce Lee’s trademark yellow track suit with a samurai sword in hand and blood on her face, Tarantino immortalized Uma Thurman.
Whether you are a fan of this type of movies or not, you will remember this movie and you are going to remember Uma Thurman forever this way.
