Guest Review: Kill Bill (2003)

By T-Rav

In discussing Pulp Fiction last year, several of us remarked that Inglourious Basterds was our least favorite of Quentin Tarantino’s movies (as opposed to Pulp Fiction being perhaps our favorite), for several reasons but mainly having to do with its glorification of mindless violence. The two Kill Bill movies, which I shall treat here as a single entity, fall somewhere between those other works of his. They’re fascinating films and a lot of fun, but there’s a certain emptiness to them, and I’m not sure if this was intentional or unintentional.

** spoiler alert **

Kill Bill is the story of Beatrix Kiddo, aka “The Bride” (Uma Thurman). Kiddo is an assassin for a man we only know as Bill (David Carradine), a powerful and vicious crime lord. Upon learning she is pregnant with Bill’s daughter, Kiddo tries to flee, but he puts a bullet in her head and leaves her in a coma. Upon awakening from that coma four years later, and believing she has lost the baby, Kiddo embarks on a path of vengeance against Bill’s henchmen (or rather, his henchpersons), and finally against Bill himself. But there’s a small wrinkle: Their daughter, B.B., did in fact survive, and is now being raised by Bill, who seems to be a very doting father. This twist radically alters the way in which we view the movie.

Much of what made Tarantino’s early work so captivating is repeated to great effect here. As with Pulp Fiction, the story is told out of order, with extended flashbacks throughout and jumping from the middle of Kiddo’s rampage back to the beginning. In this case, it’s not so clear whether this was done to make a point or to have a dramatic fight when necessary, but either way, it works. Another critical strength is the amount of time devoted to character development.

The people we meet in Kill Bill are not your typical gangsters or hit men. They all give the appearance of being well-educated, can be frequently found philosophizing about various matters, and while they’re frequently in fights to the death, there’s no sense that they and their opponents hate each other. We see a lot of superficial courtesy and even respect. For instance, Bill allows Kiddo to find him at his hacienda, not only so she can meet their daughter, but because it’s nobler to have a face-to-face confrontation than to try to pick her off with a sniper or a car bomb. The use of flashbacks also allows us to see how these characters began and matured over time, and as the story is revealed piece by piece, we get drawn to these people. In fact, I would venture to say that these are some of the best-drawn characters in any work by Tarantino.

Another feature repeated and made into a great strength is the unexpected quality of the showdowns. We get some mesmerizing swordfights and brutal martial-arts violence, but we also get some surprise endings to these battles. For instance, in her fight with fellow assassin Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), everything suggests Kiddo will have to chop off her head or run her through with her sword to stop her. Instead, she suddenly plucks out Driver’s eye and crushes it. As her other eye was plucked out in the past, this leaves Driver blind and helpless; Kiddo leaves her to thrash about in a rage. And in her final confrontation with Bill, she kills him not with a weapon but by poking the pressure points on his heart, causing it to explode—but only after he’s had time to button his coat and walk out onto his lawn, thus allowing the father of her child a dignified, “clean” death.

These are all positive qualities. But there’s something wrong with the movie nonetheless, which I attribute to the lack of a moral center.

Now, it might seem that Kiddo is the logical moral center/protagonist, since the movie revolves around her, and she’s seeking revenge against the people who left her for dead and (so she believes) caused her baby to die. While this does inspire a lot of sympathy, consider some of her actions along the way. The very first person we see Kiddo in battle with is another of her would-be killers, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), who she manages to kill—in front of Green’s young daughter. This, after Green expressed remorse for her actions and in vain asked Kiddo’s forgiveness. It doesn’t seem to matter to Beatrix whether or not her attackers are sorry or trying to turn over a new leaf (and not all of them are); they deserve to be punished, and she’ll carry that punishment out regardless. In the finale, she doesn’t hesitate to kill Bill even after finding out her daughter is alive and that Bill, whatever his crimes, has been a loving father to her.

To be fair, this story would probably end the same if everyone’s roles were reversed. But that’s precisely the problem—the “hero” and the “villains” have virtually identical moral traits. Theoretically, Kiddo could easily have been involved in someone else’s cold-blooded assassination and become the object of someone else’s revenge. To be fair, the whole point of her leaving “the life” is to give her daughter something better; otherwise, though, there’s nothing about her that sets her apart from her enemies, and when you don’t have that kind of clear-cut difference, it’s hard to root for the protagonist.

Moreover, consider how the movie ends, and what Kiddo’s wrath has left in its wake. She has her daughter back, sure, but she’s also deprived poor B.B. (who doesn’t really know her) of her father, and killed others left and right. Nor does she show any regret for her actions, telling Green’s now-motherless daughter, “I’m not sorry. . . Grow up, and if you still feel like killing me for what I’ve done, I guess I’ll see you then.” Pretty callous, not to mention nihilistic. I suppose it’s possible that Tarantino was trying to subtly criticizing this sort of behavior; early on, one of Kiddo’s trainers warns her that “Revenge is not a straight line—it’s a forest,” one it can become impossible to find your way out of. But given the movie’s efforts to make her the heroine, it’s hard to tell what he was going for here.

Kill Bill is a fun movie to watch, and in its details it’s very well made. But thematically, it’s definitely weaker than Tarantino’s early films, thanks to its lack of a clear protagonist and its glorification of violence for violence’s sake. And anarchy is hard to celebrate.