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«Kill Bill»

Kill Bill is a two part film by writer-director Quentin Tarantino, starring Uma Thurman as The Bride. Originally conceived as one film, it was released in two separate 'volumes' (in late 2003 and early 2004) due to its running time of approximately four hours. The movie is an epic-length revenge drama, with homages to earlier film genres, such as Hong Kong martial arts movies, Japanese Chanbara films, exploitation films and Italian spaghetti westerns; an extensive use of popular music and pop culture references; and aestheticization of violence. Filming took place in California, Texas, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Mexico.

Kill Bill is one story, divided into two volumes with five chapters each, presented in a nonlinear style, as is common among Tarantino's films. This synopsis, unlike the film, is presented chronologically.

Volume 1

The Bride (Uma Thurman) is a former assassin and lover of a man named Bill (David Carradine), her former boss. Pregnant, and wanting to move beyond the life of an assassin to raise the child, she left him, and was about to marry another man. Bill and his other assassins, the four Deadly Vipers, arrive at the El Paso wedding chapel during the wedding rehearsal, and massacre everyone at the chapel. She attempts to tell her would-be killer, Bill (Carradine), that the baby is his, but he shoots her in the side of her head, leaving her in a coma.

She awakens in a coma ward four years later, and is horrified to discover she is no longer pregnant, leading her to assume her baby is dead. Her monitored heartrate speeds up, but when she hears someone coming into the room she controls her heartbeat, and it goes back to a steady normal. This shows that she is still in instant command of many aspects of her nervous system (although she finds her legs won't function). She escapes from the hospital after dispatching the sleazy orderly, named Buck, who had come into the room with one of his "customers". He apparently has been selling sexual access to her body as she lay comatose. After killing both men, she takes the keys to Buck's truck (a custom-painted truck with a big "Pussy Wagon" sticker on the back), and, lying in the truck, she starts to try to move her toes. She recalls the story of O-Ren Ishii, the woman that is later first on her death list. After that, her big toe starts to move. After practicing for 13 hours, she can move normally. She then uses the truck to escape the hospital.

Then the Bride travels to Okinawa, Japan to obtain a sword from Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba), a renowned swordsmith, who has retired to the life of a sushi chef. Though Hanzō has taken a blood oath to never make another sword, The Bride is able to convince him of the merit of her mission by just telling him her target: his former student Bill. Hanzo takes over a month to make the sword, and in that time she follows his suggestion to practice while staying in his upstairs room.

The Bride then travels to Tokyo, Japan, where she confronts a Deadly Viper turned Yakuza leader, O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) at a restaurant named The House of Blue Leaves. We are introduced to O-Ren Ishii by a long animated sequence, as well as a film sequence, in which we learn both how she became a killer and then how she wields power over the Yakuza. At the House of Blue Leaves The Bride first severs the arm of O-Ren's lawyer, Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), then kills her immediate guards, including her personal bodyguard, Gogo Yubari (Kuriyama). After the arrival of O-Ren's army of henchmen, the Crazy 88, The Bride is forced to fight off the entire gang, killing or wounding all save one (a young member who hardly had any sword fighting skill at all, the Bride simply spanks him with her sword and sends him away), before dueling with O-Ren in the snow. By the duel's end, O-Ren is killed, the top of her skull cleaved off by the Bride's Hanzō sword.

The Bride dumps the badly wounded Fatale at a hospital, where she later tells Bill that she revealed the locations of the remaining Deadly Vipers under threat of further injuries and that the Bride is setting out to kill them, as well as Bill himself. Bill does not blame her and asks Fatale if The Bride knows that her daughter is still alive.

Some time after this, the Bride arrives at the house of Vernita Green (Fox) of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in the "Pussy Wagon", and engages her in a vicious fight, though she agrees to cease their hostilities when Vernita's four-year-old daughter arrives. Vernita attempts to apologize to the Bride, but the Bride is unmoved. The two agree to a knife fight later that evening, but before The Bride can depart, Green attempts to kill her with a gun hidden in a cereal box. The Bride throws a knife, killing Green instead. However, while she pulls out the knife from Green's body, Vernita's four-year old daughter walks in. As the Bride quickly wipes the blood off the knife, she offers the child a chance for closure in the future, and leaves the house. This scene actually opens the movie and the rest is told through flashback.

Volume 2

The opening of Volume 2 greatly reprises the opening scenes of the first volume, the wedding rehearsal scenes and massacre. We are briefly introduced to The Bride, her groom-to-be, and their friends, before Bill arrives. Bill convinces The Bride that he has gracefully accepted her decision, and agrees to pose as her father as a cover story for everyone else. The Deadly Vipers then arrive and begin the massacre of everyone in the church. The film then cuts to the Bride driving her car to Bill's location, as he is now the last on her death list.

Bill ventures to the California desert to warn his brother Budd (Michael Madsen), another former Deadly Viper, that the Bride will come for him next. Budd, now an overweight alcoholic, has put his assassin days behind him, living in a trailer and working as a bouncer at a local strip club, where he is verbally abused and generally treated poorly by the manager. The Bride arrives at Budd's trailer that night, but Budd shoots her in the chest with rock salt and injects her with a sedative. Budd calls Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and offers to sell her the Bride's Hanzō sword for $1 million. Budd then buries the Bride alive with a flashlight in a grave.

She lies in her grave, panicked, seemingly losing hope. Suddenly she stops struggling, goes instantly calm, slightly smiles, and clicks off the flashlight. The Bride has remembered (and here in the film a flashback to her memory begins) her early training in China, when Bill took her to the temple of legendary martial arts master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), an elderly martial arts master. He could perform a fatal attack called the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, which is so secret that he has not even taught it to Bill. According to Bill, he "hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women." Nevertheless, he takes in The Bride and molds her into a formidable fighter. He brutally trains her, and she eventually gains his silent respect. In the present, The Bride calls on Pai Mei's training to break out of the coffin and dig her way up to the surface.

The Bride arrives on a hilltop overlooking Budd's trailer, and sees the one-eyed Elle Driver arriving in her sports car. Elle gives Budd a suitcase of money for the sword, but it also contains a black mamba that bites Budd repeatedly, killing him quickly while Elle describes to him what is happening to his body. Elle calls Bill to tell him that the Bride killed Budd, and also how to find the final resting place of Beatrix Kiddo, which is revealed at this point to be the Bride's name. Beatrix then attacks Elle, and a furious fight ensues. Elle reveals that Pai Mei, who also taught her, pulled out her eye for calling him a "miserable old fool" and that she later poisoned him with fish heads. During the sword clash, Beatrix plucks out Elle's remaining eye, leaving blinded Elle to writhe in the trailer with the same black mamba that killed Budd, leaving her fate ambiguous, then leaves.

After learning of Bill's location from Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks), the pimp who raised Bill, Beatrix arrives at Bill's home, where she is shocked to find that B.B., her four-year-old daughter, is alive and apparently expecting her mother's return. The family spends the evening together peacefully, and after B.B. falls asleep, Bill shoots Beatrix with a dart filled with truth serum, in order to ask her a few questions. Beatrix reveals that, after she discovered her pregnancy she had to put her unborn daughter's future above Bill's wishes. The estranged couple sit down at a table outside. Bill admits he had overreacted towards the situation in attempting to kill her. However, Beatrix claims she is still in disbelief over what Bill had done and insists that she complete her unfinished business. Bill then draws his sword to attack her. Beatrix dodges his attack and draws her own sword, but Bill succeeds in disarming her. He thrusts to stab her with his sword, but she catches it in her own Hanzo sheath and disables Bill with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, secretly taught to her by Pai Mei. Bill, defeated, says a tender goodbye before standing up, buttoning his coat, and taking the five steps required of the technique before his heart explodes, and he dies. Beatrix and B.B. depart, and the next day Beatrix is shown sobbing at the death of her former lover, while her daughter watches cartoons in the next room. Beatrix's sobs turn to laughter caused by the delight of having her daughter alive and well. The end of the film shows a long frontal view of the Mother and Daughter driving down the road as the credits roll.

Guinea, 2007, Uma Thurman, «Kill Bill»

Guinea, 2007, Uma Thurman, «Kill Bill»