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A couple of the great flicks I’ve seen were Kill Bill Vol 1 and Vol 2! I really enjoyed the gratuitous violence the bride (Uma Thurman) extracted against her former assassins buddies! The story line is about an assassin leaving her former boss/boy friend – basically quiting the assassin business and getting married to lead a normal life. Well Bill (David Carradine) and his assassins showed up at the wedding and left the bride on life support. The movies (vol 1 & 2) are the brides revenge!
While I had seen some strong female movie roles – I had not to this point seen so much violence by women in a move! I think this is due to Quentin Tarantino’s vision of bringing back the blood and gore back into movies. You really do have to suspend dis-belief watching these movies because like the typical karate flick, you will see fighters flying through the air – perpetuating the myth that karate fighters are somehow bigger than life! Watch some short sequences from these movies and I will discuss how women martial artists can fight today.
The bride was vicious fighting her former deadly viper assassination squad teammate, Hanna. I really liked the sword play but did not think too much of the wide (cowboy style) punches that were so easily blocked! Oh well – as I said, suspend disbelief.
The fighters in this movie seemed to use indiscriminate striking a lot. I liked that the bride plucked out Hanna’s eye during the sword fight. That brings me to an interesting point about real self-defense, you should use whatever weapons or openings that are presented!
When I was young, I used to drink hot chocolate or later coffee. If I was ever threatened, my first planned move would have been to toss the hot drink into the attackers face and then take them out!
Back to this movie, the one scene that was surreal to me at the time was the bride vs Gogo. I had a step-daughter at the time who wore the school uniforms and was trying to imagine how a sweet little girl like that could be so mean! I was totally taken aback by this attack in the move.
Gogo was played by Chiaki Yuriyama, who really pulled off the sweet school girl until she started swinging her ball. Now I do think that girls can pull of an attack if they need to and weapons can even up the score some.
Well the bride finally get around to tracking Bill down and gets down to business. Here is the final fight scene in volume 2.
The bride killed Bill with a 5 point exploding heart technique. Well let me just say that this was a fitting end to these movies but lets talks about this a bit. When I was a kid I used to hear about the touch of death or vibrating palm techniques. I then heard that masters could pull a heard out of a body while it was still breathing and show it to the dieing man! I also heard that the karate yell could be practiced to kill small animals!
Well let me just say karate is not magical but peoples belief systems can be. What do I mean? Well if you believe in something enough – it can be true for you. I did a previous post on, “The death touch!, Does it exist?” where I examined this phenomena. Just as in this movie, it seems to me if something like the death touch is real – it would have to be among people that believed in it.
I hope you have enjoyed my quick overview of the Kill Bill movies and if you have not yet seen them – go rent the movies and enjoy a good flick!
April 19th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Pei Mei in Volume II is one of my favorite characters, not just in the kill bill movies, but in any kung fu movie!
What a great portrayal of that classic chinese master from kung fu movies of old.
April 20th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Yep! Pei Mei is very entertaining
August 1st, 2010 at 9:18 pm
i seen Uma personally and she is quite a tall lady,..-’
September 28th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Kill Bill is the best known work of Uma Thurman, i really like this tall girl-;: