| Director: | Quentin Tarantino | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Writer: | Quentin Tarantino | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Starring: | Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released: | October 16, 2003 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Runtime: | 100 minutes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Story: |
The fourth movie by Quentin Tarantino is an epic tale of one woman's quest for justice
presented in two installments. In Kill Bill- Vol. 1 the title character is a mostly unseen
sinister figure looming over the story who has organized an elite group called the Deadly
Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS). All of the vipers are code-named after poisonous
serpents and the deadliest of them all is Black Mamba, who is also Bill's former lover.
Early in Vol. 1 a Texas Ranger (Michael Parks) surveys a grisly scene: an entire wedding party slaughtered during a dress rehearsal in a rural chapel. The pregnant woman in the blood-splattered wedding dress is Black Mamba, better known as The Bride. Bill and The Vipers left The Bride for dead, but unluckily for them she was merely comatose. The Viper assassin California Mountain Snake, a.k.a. Elle Driver, creeps into The Bride's hospital room, disguised as a nurse and brandishing a syringe - only to be called off at the last possible moment by Bill himself. Four years later, The Bride suddenly awakens and realizes what has been done to her. She disposes of the hospital orderly who has been auctioning off her (immobile) sexual favors, confiscates his garish "Pussy Wagon," and sets off on a ferociously focused mission. Her first target among the wedding massacre participants is the Viper known as Cottonmouth, O-Ren Ishii. At seven O-Ren hid only inches away as her parents were killed. At age eleven she took her own bloody revenge, and has since become the first female boss-of-all-bosses of the Japanese yakuza underworld. In Okinawa, The Bride acquires a legendary bladed weapon from the last of the world's great samurai sword-smiths, the legendary ninjitsu master Hattori Honzo. In Tokyo, O-Ren Ishii is surrounded by her lethal henchmen and holds court in a massive nightclub/restaurant complex, the House of Blue Leaves. The Bride's assault upon this stronghold is a pitched martial arts battle with hundreds of black clad soldiers of O-Ren's personal shock squad, The Crazy 88s. The assault also includes personal showdowns with two of O-Ren's top aides, her personal assistant, Sophie Fatale, and her private bodyguard Go Go Yubari. The assault culminates in a classic, tragic snowy standoff between these two formidable warriors, O-Ren Ishii and The Bride. We begin to sense that the quest for justice could exact a heavy emotional toll upon The Bride. A few days later, in Pasadena, California, The Bride has moved on to her second knockdown-drag-out battle with a Viper target, Copperhead, a.k.a. Vernita Green). The presence of Vernita's young daughter at the scene adds a note of grim irony to the tale of a widowed mother's quest for retribution. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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