STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM “Kill Bill”

Seriously though, don’t actually make a kill list, physical or on phone. That’s just creating evidence against you.

Directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill is the story of an epic revenge quest for a woman only known as the Bride, a former hitwoman of an assassination squad who wanted to get out of that life because she got pregnant.

When her boss, Bill, finds out about what she did, he and his squad go to the church, and massacre everyone in it, including the Bride. The only problem? She didn’t stay dead.

After waking up from a coma after four years, she sets out to find each of her colleagues, and make them pay.

Where to begin with this film? Well, let’s begin with the fact that this revenge quest is so big, it needed to be split into two movies, both somehow having its own genre of film: Vol. 1 being a modern-day martial arts, samurai film...

While Vol 3 has a more Spaghetti Western genre with some scenes from 70s Hong Kong martial arts cinema.

Honestly, there is a blend of genres in this film depending on which character the Bride goes after.

That’s something that should be warned: if you go in wanting a cool martial arts film, that’s literally only the first half of the film. The second half will be nothing like that. A movie with diverse genres is typically something Tarantino does. It’s not enough to make a western, he likes to add another genre twist because it’s just fun, and makes it unique.

There’s the Japanese mafia film…

The anime film…

The Blaxploitation film…

It all flows so naturally because the tone is consistent.

It’s hard to notice it unless the film holds onto it for a long period of time, but how the scene is framed is really cool. It’s no secret Tarantino likes using cool shots from different, usually older, foreign films and putting it into his films. It works though.

As someone who is an anime fan, Kill Bill Vol. 1 came out at a time when my peak fandom hit. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch that in the theaters, but I was able to see Vol. 2. To my disappointment, it had nothing Japanese related to it, but it was still enjoyable. But yeah, it’s that first part when the Bride goes to Japan that’s my favorite.

Kill Bill is a film that is very unique to American audiences, and a standout film in Quentin Tarantino’s filmography. It was his first foray into action filmmaking, and it doesn’t show. If it does, it adds to the charm to it. Like a majority of his films, it’s violent, intellectual, comedic, and has a killer soundtrack with quotable dialogue.