Kill Bill Volume 2 Final Edition

• Published in: Tribune (Welland)
• Main Author: Stone, Jay
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Welland, Ont Torstar Syndication Services, a Division of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited 15.04.2004
• Subjects: Ford, John; Tarantino, Quentin
• ISSN: 1186-3129

When [Quentin Tarantino]'s Kill Bill Vol. 2 opens Friday, most audiences will be able to enjoy it as the straightforward Eastern- Western kung-fu six-gun ultraviolent love story it is intended to be. Tarantino, though, is the foremost of the new generation of geek film directors, movie buffs who layer their work with movie references in the manner of the metafiction authors who write books about writing books. Other references are more subtle. Tarantino is famous for rescuing careers, casting forgotten talents as lead actors. He did it with John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, and he continues in Kill Bill with a major role for David Carradine (whose father John was a frequent presence in [John Ford] films). Carradine is mostly known for his role as Caine, the martial-arts monk who wandered through the American West in the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, an early version of the East-West Tarantino landscape. The first volume of Kill Bill is similarly layered with movie references, and includes the casting of Hong Kong martial arts legends Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu, who are Tarantino icons: In True Romance, which Tarantino also wrote, the Christian Slater character attends a double feature of Sonny Chiba films. Part of this is simply homage, some of it is winking at fellow film buffs, but the references and history add layers to the movie that go beyond that. They turn Tarantino movies into Rosetta Stones of cinema, half- glimpsed tributes that give the stories a patina of cool. A striking fight in the chapter of Vol. 2 entitled The Cruel Tutelage of Pei Mei was choreographed by Master Yuen Woo-ping, who created memorable battles for both The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There's a hint of the Crouching Tiger "wire fu" in Kill Bill that lends some of the ethereal magic of that movie to the pop-culture violence of Tarantino's vision.