Fixing Kill Bill
Kill Bill, the whole bloody affair, isn’t Tarantino’s best (not even close) nor his worst, it’s middling. A Tarantino home run is to be savoured (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown), and I can also forgive a swing-and-a-miss (The Hateful Eight), but he should never serve up mediocrity. If this film were an episode of Friends it would be called “The one where Quentin aimed low and still missed the target”.
It’s a ripe genre flick that spends much of its running time nudging you in the ribs whispering “this is just throwaway fluff, so relax and have fun”. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, it’s refreshing even, but after four hours, even fluff gets tiresome. We get a grizzly, stomach churning attempted-rape scene, followed by a rib-tickling action-spectacular featuring severed limbs and geysers of blood. The rare moments of emotion that do land with any kind of weight are undercut by po-faced discussions of Superman comics. After building up credibility with his first three features, and at the zenith of early-2000’s Tarantino-mania, Quentin’s inner nerd finally felt secure enough to bring out his comic book collection and declare “This is literature”.
And yet, despite it all, he’s such a gifted filmmaker that he can’t help but deliver some truly breathtaking moments. The Bride’s epic battle at the House of Blue Leaves, and her escape from being buried alive stand out as two particularly bravura sequences. Performances all-round are also as excellent and committed as we have come to expect. It’s not a mess, so much as a carefully constructed morass of wrong-headed ideas, but delivered with passion and abundant flair.
Like an iPhone passcode-cracking machine silently trying combination after combination, I feel like my subconscious has been chewing over the problem of Kill Bill for years – and has finally spit out the code to unlock it; the single, fundamental reason why it doesn’t work:
I don’t like Uma Thurman’s central character of The Bride/Beatrix Kiddo.
And it’s waaaaay too long. Okay, two reasons.
The bride unlikeable? But how can that be? I mean, yes she’s a hired assassin, but she suffers, how she suffers! First she’s shot in church on her wedding day by her former lover and associates, who go on to murder her husband-to-be and her friends. Next she wakes from a coma years later to learn that her unborn daughter also (apparently) died in the attack. We can certainly understand her desire for revenge. But why should we care?
So one hired killer gets brutally ambushed by other hired killers… so what? Yes, we instinctively dislike her attackers for the simple fact that they are bad people who kill for money. The problem is, our ‘heroine’ is just like them. Tarantino never troubles to offer ‘The Bride’ some redeeming qualities nor any justification for her life of crime up to that point. Indeed, in the world of the film, the families of her victims may very well find just satisfaction in her ordeal.
As an audience member, I just don’t care whether she wins or not.
The genesis of Kill Bill reveals a clue as to the source of this foundational problem. Famously, Thurman pitched Tarantino the basic idea for The Bride during production on Pulp Fiction. It’s not too much of a stretch to think that Quentin, at the height of his pomp, allowed himself to get carried away by the whispered confidences of a beautiful Movie Star. ‘The Bride? I can do that. I can do anything!’ It is telling that he stamped the closing credits with the letters “Q&U” i.e. “Quentin and Uma”. The one completes the other. I bet he loved that.
Were it not for him having his head turned by stardom, adulation and the ability to indulge himself completely, his post-Jackie Brown career may well have taken a different path. Instead of slumming it with the likes of Kill Bill and Deathproof he might have continued to challenge himself and produce the kind of extraordinary cinema he is certainly capable of.
Even so, if he’d just come up for air when writing this revenge genre flick, I believe he would’ve realised the simple adjustment to the story he could have made to make The Bride’s quest immeasurably more compelling.
Bill’s target at the wedding massacre should’ve been the groom – his brother Budd (Michael Madsen), with Ms Kiddo mown down in the crossfire. Let us imagine that Bill and Budd co-founded and ran the ‘Deadly Viper Assassination Squad’ together, and – despite their often volatile sibling rivalry – their business ran smoothly. That is, until Budd happened to fall in love with Beatrix, a carefree, happy-go-lucky waitress, played by Thurman. He decides to give up his life of crime, get married in secret and disappear. Beatrix, his unsuspecting bride, is an ordinary, innocent person who pays the price when Budd’s violent past catches up with him. No-one quits the Deadly Vipers, not even Bill’s brother.
The rest of the story could play out pretty much the same, except instead of getting flashbacks to Kiddo being nurtured and encouraged by Bill, we see her track Pai Mei down and demand that he train her, so she can exact revenge. It simplifies the character motivations and strengthens the story.
Furthermore, her underdog status would be massively amplified; the scale of her mission that much more monumental. This Bride would train harder than Movie-Bride, fight more viciously, be ridiculed more savagely by each and every name on her list. And her revenge would be that much sweeter. We would marvel at her newly acquired skills, and relish the first, tantalising flickers of doubt experienced by her enemies. We would feel her terror at facing the Crazy 88, and her blind rage when battling O-Ren Ishii, Elle Driver, Vernita Green and of course Bill himself.
Her eventual triumph would feel that much more honest, earned and satisfying.
We would constantly root for her.
Oh, and make it shorter. Like a lot shorter. I mean, lose at least an hour. Maybe two.
