Kill Bill: Volume 1
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a 2003 American martial arts film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, who swears revenge on a team of assassins (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), after they try to kill her and her unborn child. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza.
Tarantino conceived Kill Bill as a homage to grindhouse cinema, including martial arts films, samurai cinema, blaxploitation, and spaghetti Westerns. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. It is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production; they were planned as a single release, but the film, with a runtime of over four hours, was divided in two. Volume 2 was released the following year. Volume 1 grossed over $180 million on a $30 million budget.
Plot
A woman in a wedding dress, the Bride, lies wounded in a chapel in El Paso, Texas, having been attacked by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. She tells their leader, Bill, that she is pregnant with his baby just before he shoots her in the head.
Four years later, having survived the attack, the Bride goes to the home of Vernita Green, planning to kill her. Both women were members of the Deadly Vipers, which has since disbanded; Vernita now leads a normal suburban family life. They engage in a knife fight which is interrupted when Vernita's young daughter Nikki arrives. The Bride agrees to meet Vernita at night to settle the matter, but when Vernita tries to shoot the Bride with a pistol hidden in a box of cereal, the Bride throws a knife into Vernita's chest, killing her. Nikki witnesses the killing, and the Bride offers her a chance to avenge her mother's death when she grows up, should she choose to do so.
Four years earlier, police investigate the massacre at the wedding chapel. The sheriff discovers that the Bride is alive but comatose. In the hospital, Deadly Viper Elle Driver prepares to assassinate the Bride via lethal injection, but Bill aborts the mission at the last moment, considering it dishonorable to kill the defenseless Bride.
Awakening from her four-year coma, the Bride is horrified to find that she is no longer pregnant. She kills a man who tries to rape her and a hospital worker who has been selling her body while she was comatose. She takes the hospital worker's truck and teaches herself to walk again.
Resolving to kill Bill and the other Deadly Vipers, the Bride picks her first target: O-Ren Ishii, now the leader of the Tokyo yakuza. After witnessing the yakuza murder her parents when she was a child, O-Ren took vengeance on the yakuza boss and replaced him after training as an elite assassin. The Bride travels to Okinawa, Japan, to obtain a sword from legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō, who has sworn never to forge a sword again. After learning that her target is Bill, his former student, he relents and crafts his finest sword for her, taking a month to finish the job.
The Bride tracks O-Ren to the House of Blue Leaves, a Tokyo restaurant, and amputates the arm of her assistant, Sofie Fatale. She defeats the Crazy 88, O-Ren's squad of elite fighters, and kills her bodyguard, schoolgirl Gogo Yubari. O-Ren and the Bride duel in the restaurant's Japanese garden; the Bride gains the upper hand and kills O-Ren by slicing off the top of her head. After torturing Sofie for information about Bill, the Bride leaves her alive as a threat. Bill finds Sofie and asks her if the Bride knows that her daughter is alive.
Cast
- Uma Thurman as the Bride (code name Black Mamba), a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, described as "the deadliest woman in the world". She seeks revenge on the Deadly Vipers after they try to kill her and her unborn child in a wedding chapel.
- Lucy Liu as Template:Visible anchor (code name Cottonmouth), a former Deadly Viper who has become the leader of the Japanese Yakuza. She and the Bride once had a close friendship. She is the Bride's first target.
- David Carradine as Template:Vanchor (code name Snake Charmer), the former leader of the Deadly Vipers, the Bride's former lover, and the father of her daughter. He is the final target of the Bride's revenge. He is an unseen character until Volume 2.
- Vivica A. Fox as Template:Visible anchor (code name Copperhead), a former Deadly Viper and now a mother and homemaker, living under the name Jeannie Bell. She is the Bride's second target
- Michael Madsen as Template:Vanchor (code name Sidewinder), a former Deadly Viper and Bill's brother, now working as a strip club bouncer and living in a trailer. He is the Bride's third target
- Daryl Hannah as Template:Vanchor (code name California Mountain Snake), a former Deadly Viper and the Bride's fourth target
- Julie Dreyfus as Template:Vanchor, O-Ren's lawyer, confidante, and second lieutenant. She is also a former protégée of Bill's, and was present at the wedding chapel massacre
- Sonny Chiba as Template:Visible anchor, a sushi chef and long-retired master swordsmith who agrees to craft a sword just for the Bride
- Chiaki Kuriyama as Template:Vanchor, O-Ren's sadistic Japanese schoolgirl bodyguard
- Gordon Liu as Johnny Mo, head of O-Ren's personal army, the Template:Vanchor
- Michael Parks as Earl McGraw, a Texas Ranger who investigates the wedding chapel massacre. Parks originated McGraw in the Robert Rodriguez film From Dusk till Dawn, which Tarantino wrote and acted in. He would go on to reprise the role in both segments of the Rodriguez/Tarantino collaboration Grindhouse. Parks also appeared in Volume 2 as a separate character, Esteban Vihaio
- Michael Bowen as Template:Vanchor, an orderly at the hospital who has been raping the Bride while she lay comatose
- Jun Kunimura as Boss Tanaka, a yakuza whom O-Ren executes after he ridicules her ethnicity and gender
- Kenji Ohba as Shiro, Hattori Hanzo's employee
- James Parks as Edgar McGraw, a Texas Ranger and son of Earl McGraw
- Jonathan Loughran as Buck's trucker client, killed by the Bride after he attempts to rape her
- Yuki Kazamatsuri as the Proprietress of the House of Blue Leaves
- Sakichi Sato as "Charlie Brown", a House of Blue Leaves employee who is mocked by the Crazy 88, as he wears a kimono similar to the shirt worn by the Peanuts character.
- Ambrosia Kelley as Nikki Bell, Vernita's four-year-old daughter. She witnesses the Bride killing her mother, and the Bride suggests that she seek revenge when she gets older, if she still "feel[s] raw about it".
- The 5.6.7.8's (Sachiko Fuji, Yoshiko Yamaguchi and Ronnie Yoshiko Fujiyama) as themselves, performing at the House of Blue Leaves
