KILL BILL, VOL. 1 (2003)

When I decided to write this article about KILL BILL, I didn’t realize I had never seen the movies. Watching the first volume through the first time, I was stoked to see that, while there are loads of problematic themes, The Bride herself was a complex and slightly flawed character played flawlessly and with complexity by Uma Thurman that I didn’t mind any outdated sexist tropes that surrounded her or into which she found herself implanted.

From the beginning of the movie, The Bride is powerful and defiant. She lays on the floor in a pool of her own blood as man named Bill (an unseen David Carradine) walks up and chats about how he isn’t sadistic and proceeds to shoot her. This view of The Bride is one of the few times we see her as horrified and we soon learn that she was one of many victims of a massacre at her El Paso wedding including her groom, the wedding party, the reverend, the reverend’s wife, and an organ player. The film that unfolds after is an epic revenge story that’s not told in proper sequential order, because “revenge is not a straight line” according to Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba).

The Bride goes through a list of names of her former colleagues that took part in the massacre at her wedding and comes across someone she seems to have an extensive history with: Vernita Green.

Played by Vivica A. Fox, Vernita is revealed as codename “Copperhead” and gets into a ruthless knife fight with The Bride. It’s interrupted by Green’s daughter Nikki (Ambrosia Kelley) coming home after being dropped off by her school bus.

The whiplash of seeing The Bride ruthlessly fighting Vernita across her house to seeing her sensitivity towards this little girl shows us early on the complexity of this character.

While we see that our protagonist is determined to kill Vernita for the trespasses against her—we find out that The Bride was pregnant when she was beaten and shot at her wedding—this resurrected revenger does not want to traumatize Nikki and allows Vernita a pause to fight to the death at a later time or date. Unfortunately, Vernita attempts to shoot The Bride who’s forced to kill…which Nikki sees and stands emotionless. The Bride tells her she can come after her for revenge should she wish to in the future, stating that “it was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that, I’m sorry.”

The movie is broken up into five chapters, with the first one giving us the sense that The Bride is ruthless, she’s out for revenge, and will not stop despite the challenges ahead of her. And yet she understands that she cannot always have everything immediately or the way she wanted events to unfold.

She tells Vernita that “it’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality,” which holds up throughout the film.

The Bride beseeches Hattori Hanzo to crafting her one of his infamous swords and shows off her intelligence through fluency in Japanese.

We later see her fight off an outlandishly large amount of goons known as the Crazy 88—the yakuza enforcers of former Deadly Viper Assassination Squad colleague, O-Ren Ishii AKA Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu).

In their final battle, our heroine clearly has an internal fire and fear that she stuffs deep inside herself to murder O-Ren, but you wouldn’t be able to tell as she scalps her opponent in a clean swipe of her blade after an intense back-and-forth.

With all the superhuman feats The Bride completes in this part of her quest, it’s moments like the opening scene showing her vulnerability at her own doomed wedding, her mercy and future promise to Nikki after killing her mother, her memory of the horrors inflicted upon her at the hands of her nurse while she was in a coma, and even the comical spanking she gave a young goon from the Crazy 88 that are the highlights of the movie for me.

For such a steady character with understandable amounts of vengeful rage, she displays moments of emotion so lightly that you wouldn’t be alone if you wrote them off as exhaustion or happenstance due to situations around her. These flaws make The Bride stronger and without seeing her fair rationality, her mental fortitude, and her ability to engage in lighthearted conversations and seemingly have a good time while sending a warning message of what is to come to Bill, this character’s development would be shallow.

An article like this can’t do The Bride’s character development justice, but it’s only one part of a two-part film. The next article will see The Bride complete her epic revenge tale while giving us more context to her story, her actual name, and adds more complexity into the character that Vagabond once called “the Most Badass Assassin Ever.”

KILL BILL Vol. 1 is currently streaming on HBO Max and available to rent or buy from most digital platforms.