The Plot

The plot follows a character known for most of the story as The Bride, her name withheld. The Bride was an expert international assassin who left her team when she found out she was pregnant and decided to get married. But her team, particularly her boss and lover, Bill, did not accept this. Their attack leaves The Bride in a coma she is never expected to wake up from…but she does. After nearly being killed, losing her child and many other loved ones The Bride seeks revenge on her old team and in particular – Bill

After 20 Years…

The story is very much broken into chapters as The Bride crosses people off her revenge hit-list, there are intense action scenes followed by quiet moments and sections of anime or odd almost comedic sketches of The Bride getting the things she needs. It jumps back and forth in time around each of these showdowns – giving the audience relevant information, showing backstory between characters etc. It crosses off many items on a Tarantino checklist: extreme violence, an interesting and unusual soundtrack, and homages to other films.

Every fight scene is amazing and distinctive and for a revenge film where everyone is an assassin that is important. There are unusual shifts in tone in these fights – for example when The Bride goes to face O-Ren Ishii she must first battle through her samurai gang, killing dozens of people and verges on cartoonish fighting and jarringly over-the-top amounts of blood with a loud pop music soundtrack. But then her encounter with O-Ren, moments later, is a one-on-one sword fight comprised of only a handful of strikes, fought in a peaceful snow-covered garden and sometimes all you can hear is the sound of water and wood of a fountain.

It is perhaps outside these fight scenes – which do contain emotion as well as action – that the film falls down. This is particularly true of Kill Bill Vol.1 where there are large sections of the film that feel like they serve no purpose. Tarantino’s inability to cut down his movies is legendary and perhaps it was better to have two films rather than one very long one, but there is certainly stuff that could be removed. Kill Bill Vol.1 also contains, in my opinion, the most shocking and gratuitous example of violence in the entirety of Tarantino’s work, and that is saying something. I don’t think an actual description of what happens is necessary but suffice to say there is a moment of horrific abuse perpetuated on The Bride (and suggestion that this has happened many times before) that has no reason to be included other than to cause The Bride more suffering.

The final confrontation with Bill is a little overblown, with long monologues and even bringing out the very convenient trope of a truth serum but it ultimately is a very good end to the movie. David Carradine plays Bill, an actor best known for the tv show Kung Fu and very much part of Tarantino’s idiosyncratic casting style and is very good as the older mentor figure, turned lover, turned nemesis.

Music

Like all Tarantino films the soundtrack is a very important part of the film and has been chosen with care and while there are great tracks from The 5,6,7,8s and some old classics that most people won’t know (including me) what is most striking and memorable is the use of Ennio Morricone. Morricone did not compose new work but Tarantino used songs from other films. The work of the genius composer best known for westerns like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly brings tension, pathos and dread to the film, and is used intentionally to evoke the themes of westerns, and one can see the Kill Bill story told through a western – a gang turning their back on a member who then tracks them through the Wild West taking revenge.

For me looking at both Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol.2 and assessing the whole work is difficult as I do not like the first film, but think Vol.2 is great, and it’s hard to reconcile those two ideas. Certainly, the film has a huge legacy with outfits, songs, quotes quickly settling into the cultural understanding of the 2000s but does not belong in Tarantino’s top tier.

Also Read: Quentin Tarantino Directing A Star Trek Film? Here’s What It Would’ve Been Like

The post Twenty Years On: Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

John was living a quiet life. Still in mourning for his recently deceased wife he spends his time caring for the dog she bought him and driving his classic car. After refusing to sell his car to Russian mobsters they decide to steal it and end up killing John’s dog. This was a huge mistake as John was actually a retired legendary assassin and was very upset about his dog. Before John can do anything the Russian mobsters decide to strike first and send people to kill him – who utterly fail.

Hutch was living a quiet life in the suburbs. He had a wife and two children and a good job at his father-in-law’s company. One night people break into Hutch’s house and steal a few things during which he complies with their demands. People mock Hutch for his perceived cowardice. This event seems to rekindle something within Hutch and while ultimately taking no revenge on the burglars instead looks for opportunities to get involved in a confrontation which he quickly finds, beating some thoroughly unpleasant people to a pulp. These people, however, were Russian mobsters who come looking for revenge. This was a huge mistake as it turns out Hutch is a retired legendary assassin and was very upset that they came to his family home.

These are the respective storylines of John Wick and Nobody – both enjoyable action films with a lot of similarities (both are written by the same person). However, there seemed a crucial difference between the two films. John Wick seemed to be genuinely retired and had no interest in killing sprees whereas Hutch is perhaps a little bored. At one point Hutch says perhaps after retiring from an action-packed life of a government assassin he went too far the other way in the incredibly quiet and docile life he made.

In both films, the villains are in organised crime which is a shorthand for saying are very bad people that we shouldn’t feel too much pity for as John and Hutch wipe them out. The spark of revenge for Wick that they kill his dog was rather inspired, I feel in many films it would have been Wick’s wife (who died of an illness) but in many ways killing a dog feels worse. As Billy points out in Seven Psychopaths “you can’t let the animals die in the movie. Only the women.” Already we feel sorry for Wick and angry with the mobsters and before Wick can do anything they try and kill him, so not only is it revenge but Wick is fighting for survival. In Nobody Hutch holds back from the people breaking into his house – he recognises them as desperate people who don’t want to hurt anyone. Hutch’s return to his old ways is later – when awful people get on a bus and start harassing a woman and he intervenes. It’s great that Hutch helped her but when he saw the people outside the bus he wanted them to get on, he wanted the confrontation, he wanted them to do something bad so he would have an excuse to attack them.

You are still on Hutch’s side as a viewer but I know for me it flagged something up – John Wick is reactive whereas Hutch is proactive and it subtly changed what was happening for me. For all of their similarities to me, this was a crucial difference between John Wick and Nobody. There are other “revenge” films with complicated protagonists, Prevenge is about a pregnant woman killing the people she blames for the death of her partner – importantly it is pointed out repeatedly that her partner’s death was an accident, even judged so by a court, so her revenge seems unjustified. While I feel Prevenge is well aware of this and deals with the problem that the viewer may turn against the protagonist I’m not sure Nobody ever does. Tarantino’s Kill Bill films are an epic revenge story and again, someone who had given up their dangerous life for peace (although the Bride essentially admits it wouldn’t have lasted) – a line from Bud “That woman, deserves her revenge and… we deserve to die. But then again, so does she.” points out that she may well be warranted in killing them but other people would feel the same about her.

Ultimately what may make Nobody work is Bob Odenkirk, a fantastic actor who has spent years playing Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill the morally corrupt lawyer from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. It’s hard to dislike Odenkirk and so it’s easy to root for Hutch especially as unlike the always impeccably cool John Wick/Keanu Reeves both he and his character seem more ordinary. Perhaps the problem with Nobody is that you could turn the premise of the story around – Yulian (the main villain of Nobody) seeks revenge after a former government hitman who rides around on buses looking for trouble brutalises his younger brother – although you’d probably have to make the younger brother a more sympathetic character.

Also Read: 7 Reasons Characters Die In Horror Films

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