Kill Bill

Kill Bill is the fourth feature film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and stars Uma Thurman. Though technically one film, it was released in two parts due to its long (3 hour, 47 minute) running time. Volume 1 was released on October 10, 2003 and Volume 2 was released on April 16, 2004. Volume 1 grossed $70 million in its American release while Volume 2 grossed $66 million.

Volume 2

Plot

Note: It is revealed in Volume 2 that The Bride's real name is Beatrix Kiddo. Though this does not occur until past the halfway point, Beatrix is the name used throughout this section to avoid confusion.

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Kill Bill: Volume 2 continues the story of Beatrix (The Bride) and her quest for vengeance. After a brief flashback to Bill shooting her at the wedding chapel, she begins the film by speaking directly to the camera, reviewing the events of Kill Bill: Volume 1 and stating that she has one more death on her list, and is on her way, when she gets there she will "Kill Bill."

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We return to the wedding chapel, and see for the first time what happened there before the attack. The segment is shot in black-and-white, with a relaxed pace. Taking a break from her wedding rehearsal, Beatrix is surprised to see Bill, her former boss and lover, on the front porch of the chapel, playing his flute. He has tracked her down despite her attempt to leave him and her life as an assassin behind. They talk as past lovers, and the story continues in real time up through the attack. Bill assures her he will try to be nice, and even offers to attend the wedding. With irony in the soundtrack and slight tears of happiness in her eye, Beatrix dons her veil and is lost to us, as the camera tracks back and we see the remainder of her former assassin colleagues at Bill's command approaching the small Texas chapel and begin to fire...

Related Topics:
Veil - Texas

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Moving to the present, Bill hears of O-Ren Ishii's and Vernita Green's deaths, he knows Beatrix is going down the list. He visits his brother Budd (aka "Sidewinder", played by Michael Madsen) -- they have not spoken for a long time and last time was on bad terms -- and warns him, telling him to be careful: she is coming. Budd, now retired from assassination and a small town nightclub bouncer, seems unconcerned. He philosophically comments she knows where he is, saying "That woman deserves her revenge....and we deserve to die."

Related Topics:
Budd - Sidewinder - Michael Madsen - Bouncer

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But when she sneaks up to kill Budd at his trailer, he is in fact ready and ambushes her with a shotgun, firing non-lethal rock salt into her chest immediately after the door is opened. Subduing her with an injection, he phones Elle Driver, commenting that having captured Beatrix, he has the "greatest sword ever made" and will sell it to her for one million dollars. She agrees, with one condition: Beatrix "must suffer to her last breath."

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Budd puts Beatrix in a wooden coffin and buries her alive, after subduing her by threatening to burn her eyes with mace if she does not acquiesce.

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Flashback to many years before, Bill is taking Beatrix to Pai Mei's temple. Pai Mei was revered as one of the greatest martial arts instructors (a classic example of the Elderly Martial Arts Master stock character). Bill convinces him to accept Beatrix for training, though it appears he fought his former master as part of the "discussion." At first scathing about her flaws, he comes to respect her and teaches her apparently all he knows. The training is extremely rigorous, with many hardships.

Related Topics:
Pai Mei - Martial art - Elderly Martial Arts Master - Stock character

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Back in the coffin, Beatrix uses one of his lessons, breaking a board at short range, to eventually overcome her panic and drive a fist through the coffin lid before clawing her way to the surface. She hikes back to Budd's isolated desert trailer in time to see Elle pulling up in her Trans Am and Budd standing in the doorway.

Related Topics:
Panic - Trans Am

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Elle, along with Budd, believes her to be dead, and is meeting Budd to buy Beatrix's Hanz? sword. However, she double crosses him, planting a lethal black mamba snake in the suitcase with the money, and when he begins to check the payment, the angered snake strikes him twice. Elle mocks Budd as he dies, then bends to collect the money prior to leaving. Bill calls her cell phone, and she feigns sympathy and tells him that Budd was killed by Beatrix with a mamba, but that Beatrix herself is now dead and buried too. She also says that if Bill goes to a certain cemetery, he will be standing at "the final resting place of Beatrix Kiddo." This is the first time in the series that Beatrix's name is spoken without the audio being bleeped.

Related Topics:
Black mamba - Cell phone

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The phone call is over, and Elle picks up the Hanz? sword and money to leave the trailer. As she opens the door, Beatrix attacks her, kicking her back inside. In the ensuing fight between the two women, Elle has Beatrix's sword. The fight is made fairer when Beatrix finds Budd's own Hanz? sword in amongst the junk, inscribed "To my brother Budd, the only man I have ever loved - Bill", which he had claimed to Bill he had hocked some years ago.

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Elle and Beatrix have a brief conversation while standing apart. We learn that years before, Pai Mei had snatched out Elle's eye for insulting him. Elle reveals to Beatrix that she got her revenge when she poisoned Pai Mei's food, killing him. Elle and Beatrix clash briefly with the legendary Hanz? swords. Swords locked, Beatrix's hand suddenly darts out and snatches out Elle's remaining eye, blinding her. Walking past the black mamba on the floor, Beatrix takes her own sword and abandons the trailer and Elle, who is smashing things and screaming, unable to locate her enemy. Elle is left blinded and ranting, shut in Budd's isolated desert trailer with the black mamba. Her pending death is implied but not stated.

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(At first, it may seem disappointing that Budd was not directly killed by Beatrix. However, considering Beatrix's codename is "Black Mamba," it could be said that she killed him after a fashion, and if she had not come after him in the first place, he would still be alive. Likewise, narrative logic might suggest that Elle fell to the same black mamba that killed Budd. Therefore, it appears as if Tarantino is applying irony to the deaths of numbers three and four of Beatrix's death list.)

Related Topics:
Narrative logic - Irony

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The story shifts to Mexico and to Esteban, a pimp who raised Bill and was a friend of his mother. Beatrix asks him, in a very respectful manner, where Bill is. He tells her, saying that he does this because Bill would want him to.

Related Topics:
Mexico - Pimp

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Beatrix drives to Bill's home, prepared to kill him. However, she finds that Bill is expecting her, with a surprise: B.B., their four-year-old daughter, whom Beatrix had thought was murdered during the wedding chapel attack, is alive and well, apparently delivered while Beatrix was comatose (the audience is given this revelation during Bill's conversation with Sofie Fatale at the end of Volume 1), and met with a family scene rather than aggression, Beatrix is overcome with emotion upon finding her daughter and her mission is temporarily put on hold while her attention shifts entirely to B.B., spending hours alone with her and watching a movie with her until B.B. falls asleep.

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The child fallen asleep, Beatrix returns to the living room and has a strange conversation with Bill, during which they agree they have "unfinished business". Bill, acting the gentleman-killer, says he still has questions but doubts she can be honest about the answers, and therefore abruptly shoots her with a dart containing truth serum. She tells him why she tried to retire: how she realized upon becoming pregnant that she must put her daughter's future above Bill, and leave behind the assassin's life. Bill compares Beatrix with Clark Kent (Superman), deprecating her attempts to be a normal citizen and saying that she was trying to hide her true, destined identity.

Related Topics:
Truth serum - Retire - Clark Kent - Superman - Destined

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The tension between their mutual intent to kill each other, and the tenderness and remains of their old romance, set the emotional stage for the final scene, in which they talk, realise that they are going to fight until one dies, and following a brief scuffle with swords, Beatrix disables Bill using the fatal "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique", taught to her without Bill's knowledge by Pai Mei. The technique can be described as five blows to pressure points on the body, most notably the chest. As the victim walks away, he lasts only until his fifth step, whereupon his heart explodes inside his chest. Bill accepts his fate, knowing he has lost. He asks, "How do I look", and she answers "You look ready". Bill walks unsteadily away, collapses, and dies in silence. Beatrix wipes the odd tear from her cheek and returns to collect her daughter and start their new life.

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Details

• Samuel L. Jackson has a cameo role in the movie as Rufus, an organist in the El Paso Chapel. Jackson's character was also rumored to be Jules from Pulp Fiction, because of that character's desire to "walk the earth."
• Budd falsely claims to have pawned his Hattori Hanz? sword. In Pulp Fiction, Butch Coolidge finds a samurai sword in a pawn shop.
• During Bill's interrogation of Beatrix, he says that she is a "natural born killer," a reference to the movie Natural Born Killers, for which Tarantino also wrote the initial screenplay.
• The flute Bill is seen playing both outside the chapel and prior to Beatrix's training, is of the same style carried by another of David Carradine's characters, Kain, of Kung-fu fame.
• The prop used as Beatrix's Hattori Hanz? sword in Kill Bill was the same prop used as the nameless sword used by Miho in the screen adaptation of Sin City.
• When facing the shotgun-wielding assassin Karen, Beatrix calls herself "the deadliest woman in the world." In Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace describes her character in the failed television pilot "Fox Force Five" as "the deadliest woman in the world with a knife."