| Kill Bill: Volume 1 | |
| Director: | Quentin Tarantino |
| Producer: | Lawrence Bender |
| Starring: | |
| Music: | RZA |
| Cinematography: | Robert Richardson |
| Editing: | Sally Menke |
| Studio: | A Band Apart |
| Distributor: | Miramax Films |
| Runtime: | 111 minutes |
| Country: | United States[1] |
| Language: | English Cantonese Japanese French |
| Budget: | $30 million[2] |
| Gross: | $180.9 million |
Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a 2003 American martial arts action film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, who swears revenge on a group of assassins (Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox and Michael Madsen) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), after they try to kill her and her unborn child. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza.
Kill Bill was inspired by 1970s exploitation films and martial arts films. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. Volume 1 is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production. They were originally set for a single release, but the film, with a runtime of over four hours, was divided in two. This meant Tarantino did not have to cut scenes. Volume 2 was released six months later.
Kill Bill was theatrically released in the United States on October 10, 2003. It received positive reviews and grossed over $180 million worldwide on a $30 million budget, achieving the highest-grossing opening weekend of a Tarantino film to that point.
In 1999, the Bride, a former member of the Deadly Viper assassination squad, is rehearsing her marriage at a chapel in El Paso, Texas. The Deadly Vipers, led by Bill, attack the chapel, shooting everyone. As the Bride lies wounded, she tells Bill he is the father of her unborn child just as he shoots her in the head.
The Bride falls into a coma. In the hospital, Elle Driver, one of the Deadly Vipers, prepares to assassinate her via lethal injection. Bill aborts the mission at the last moment, considering it dishonorable to kill her while she is defenseless.
The Bride awakens four years later and is horrified to discover she is no longer pregnant. She kills a man who intends to rape her, and a hospital worker who has been selling her body while she was comatose. She takes the hospital worker's truck and vows to kill Bill and the other Deadly Vipers.
The Bride goes to the home of Vernita Green, a former Deadly Viper who now leads a normal suburban life. They engage in a knife fight, which is interrupted when Vernita's young daughter arrives home. When Vernita tries to shoot the Bride with a pistol hidden in a box of cereal, the Bride throws a knife into her chest, killing her, in front of her daughter, who she offers the chance for revenge when she becomes older.
The Bride goes to Okinawa to obtain a sword from the legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō, who has sworn never to forge a sword again. After learning that her target is Bill, his former student, he crafts his finest sword for her.
The Bride travels to Tokyo to find another Deadly Viper, O-Ren Ishii, now the leader of the Tokyo yakuza. After witnessing the yakuza murder her parents when she was a child, O-Ren took vengeance on the yakuza boss and replaced him after training as an elite assassin.
The Bride tracks O-Ren Ishii to a restaurant, where she amputates the arm of O-Ren's assistant, Sofie Fatale. The Bride defeats O-Ren's squad of elite fighters, the Crazy 88, and kills O-Ren's bodyguard, the schoolgirl Gogo Yubari. O-Ren and the Bride duel in the restaurant's Japanese garden. The Bride kills O-Ren by slicing off the top of her head. She tortures Sofie for information about the other Deadly Vipers, and leaves her alive as a threat. Bill finds Sofie and asks her if the Bride knows that her daughter is alive.
Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman conceived the Bride character during the production of Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill credits the story to "Q & U".[3] Tarantino spent a year and a half writing the script while he was living in New York City in 2000 and 2001, spending time with Thurman and her newborn daughter Maya.[4] Reuniting with the more mature Thurman, now a mother, influenced the way Tarantino wrote the Bride character. He didn't realize that her child could still be alive until the end of the writing process.
Tarantino developed many of the Bride's characteristics for the character of Shosanna Dreyfus for his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, which he worked on before Kill Bill. Dreyfus was to be an assassin with a list of Nazis she would cross off as she killed. Tarantino switched the character to the Bride and redeveloped Dreyfus.[5] Thurman cited Clint Eastwood's performance as Blondie in the 1966 film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as an inspiration. In her words, Eastwood "says almost nothing but somehow manages to portray a whole character".[6]
Tarantino originally wrote Bill for Warren Beatty, but as the character developed and the role required greater screen time and martial arts training, he rewrote it for David Carradine.[7] Beatty said he turned the role down, as he did not want to be away from his family while shooting in China.[8] Tarantino also considered Bruce Willis for the role.[9] He cast Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver after seeing her performance in the television film First Target. The physical similarities between Thurman and Hannah inspired how he wrote the rivalry between the characters.[10] Michelle Yeoh met with Tarantino about a role in the film.[11]
An early draft included a chapter after the confrontation with Vernita, in which the Bride has a gunfight with Gogo Yubari's vengeful sister Yuki. It was cut because it would have made the film overlong and added $1 million to the budget. Another draft featured a scene in which the Bride's car is blown up by Elle.
When Thurman became pregnant as shooting was ready to begin, Tarantino delayed the production, saying: "If Josef Von Sternberg is getting ready to make Morocco and Marlene Dietrich gets pregnant, he waits for Dietrich!" Principal photography began in 2002.[12] Although the scenes are presented out of chronological order, the film was shot in sequence. The choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, whose credits included The Matrix, was the martial arts advisor.[13] The anime sequence, covering O-Ren Ishii's backstory, was directed by Kazuto Nakazawa and produced by Production I.G, which had produced films including Ghost in the Shell and .[14] The combined production lasted 155 days and had a budget of $55 million.[15]
According to Tarantino, the most difficult part of making the film was "trying to take myself to a different place as a filmmaker and throw my hat in the ring with other great action directors", as opposed to the dialogue scenes he was known for. The House of Blue Leaves sequence, in which the Bride battles dozens of yakuza soldiers, took eight weeks to film, six weeks over schedule. Tarantino wanted to create "one of the greatest, most exciting sequences in the history of cinema". The crew eschewed computer-generated imagery in favor of practical effects used in 1970s Chinese cinema, particularly by the director Chang Cheh, including the use of fire extinguishers and condoms to create spurts and explosions of blood. Tarantino told his crew: "Let's pretend we're little kids and we're making a Super 8 movie in our back yard, and you don't have all this shit. How would you achieve this effect? Ingenuity is important here!"[16]
Near the end of filming, Thurman was injured in a crash while filming the scene in which she drives to Bill. According to Thurman, she was uncomfortable driving the car and asked that a stunt driver do it. Tarantino assured her that the car and road were safe. She lost control of the car and hit a tree, suffering a concussion and knee injuries. According to Thurman, Miramax would only give her the crash footage if she signed a document "releasing them of any consequences of [Thurman's] future pain and suffering". Tarantino was apologetic, but their relationship became bitter for years afterwards. Thurman said that after the car crash she "went from being a creative contributor and performer to being like a broken tool". Miramax released the footage in 2018 after Thurman went to police following the accusations of sexual abuse by the producer, Harvey Weinstein.[17] [18]
Kill Bill was planned and filmed as a single film. After editing began, Weinstein, who was known for pressuring filmmakers to shorten their films, suggested that Tarantino split the film in two. This meant Tarantino did not have to cut scenes, such as the anime sequence. Tarantino told IGN: "I'm talking about scenes that are some of the best scenes in the movie, but in this hurdling pace where you're trying to tell only one story, that would have been the stuff that would have had to go. But to me, that's kind of what the movie was, are these little detours and these little grace notes." The decision to split the film was announced in July 2003. Tarantino saved most of the Bride's character development for the second film, saying he wanted to make her scary rather than sympathetic for Volume 1.[19]
See main article: Kill Bill Vol. 1 Original Soundtrack.
Kill Bill was inspired by exploitation films that played in cheap US theaters in the 1970s, including martial arts films, samurai cinema, blaxploitation films and spaghetti westerns.[20] It pays homage to the Shaw Brothers Studio, known for its martial arts films, with the inclusion of the ShawScope logo in the opening titles and the "crashing zoom", a fast zoom usually ending in a close-up commonly used in Shaw Brothers films.[21] The animated sequence pays homage to violent anime films such as (1983) and Wicked City (1987).[22] Tarantino stated in the supplementary material on the Kill Bill DVD that the character Hattori Hanzō was named in tribute to Sonny Chiba's former role as Hattori Hanzō (the historical 16th-century Iga ninja) in the 1980s Japanese TV series Shadow Warriors.
The Guardian wrote that Kill Bills plot shares similarities with the 1973 Japanese film Lady Snowblood, in which a woman kills off the gang who murdered her family, and observed that like how Lady Snowblood uses stills and illustration for "parts of the narrative that were too expensive to film", Kill Bill similarly uses "Japanese-style animation to break up the narrative".
According to Tarantino, the animated sequence in Kill Bill was inspired by Indian director Kamal Haasan's 2001 film, Aalavandhan.[23]
Kill Bill: Volume 1 was released in theaters on, 2003. It was the first Tarantino film in six years, following Jackie Brown in 1997.[24] In the United States and Canada, Volume 1 was released in and grossed on its opening weekend. Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, said Volume 1s opening weekend gross was significant for a "very genre specific and very violent" film that in the United States was restricted to theatergoers 17 years old and up. It ranked first at the box office, beating School of Rock (in its second weekend) and Intolerable Cruelty (in its first). Volume 1 had the widest theatrical release[25] and highest-grossing opening weekend of a Tarantino film to date; Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction (1994) had each grossed on their opening weekends. According to the studio, exit polls showed that 90% of the audience was interested in seeing the second Kill Bill after seeing the first.[26]
Outside the United States and Canada, Kill Bill: Volume 1 was released in . The film outperformed its main competitor Intolerable Cruelty in Norway, Denmark and Finland, though it ranked second in Italy. Volume 1 had a record opening in Japan, though expectations were higher due to the film being partially set there and because of its homages to Japanese martial arts cinema. It had "a muted entry" in the United Kingdom and Germany due to its 18 certificate, but "experienced acceptable drops" after its opening weekend in the two territories. By, 2003, it had made in the .[27] It grossed a total of in the United States and Canada and in other territories for a worldwide total of .
In the United States, Volume 1 was released on DVD and VHS on April 13, 2004, the week Volume 2 was released in theaters. In a December 2005 interview, Tarantino addressed the lack of a special edition DVD for Kill Bill by stating "I've been holding off because I've been working on it for so long that I just wanted a year off from Kill Bill and then I'll do the big supplementary DVD package."[28] After one week of release, the film's DVD sales had surpassed its US box office gross.[29]
The United States does not have a DVD boxed set of Kill Bill, though box sets of the two separate volumes are available in other countries, such as France, Japan and the United Kingdom. Upon the DVD release of Volume 2 in the US, however, Best Buy did offer an exclusive box set slipcase to house the two individual releases together.[30] Volume 1, along with Volume 2, was released in High Definition on Blu-ray on September 9, 2008, in the United States. As of March 2012, Volume 1 sold 141,456 Blu-ray units in the US, grossing $1,477,791.[31]
After Disney sold Miramax to Filmyard Holdings in 2010, the home media and streaming rights for both Kill Bill films were sold to Lionsgate, who reissued the Blu-ray and DVD releases on April 26, 2011.[32] A limited edition steelbook release sold exclusively in Best Buy stores was released on November 24, 2013.[33] Following Paramount Global's 49% stake in Miramax, the film was reissued on Blu-ray and DVD by Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment on September 22, 2020.[34] In 2023, Lionsgate announced that they had purchased the distribution rights to both Kill Bill films, along with Jackie Brown, and announced a brand new 4K remaster for the film's 20th anniversary; all three films were released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 10, 2023, and on a 4K restoration on physical and digital on January 21, 2025.[35] [36] [37]
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Kill Bill: Volume 1 has a score of 85% based on reviews from 238 critics; the average rating is 7.70/10. Its consensus reads: "Kill Bill is admittedly little more than a stylish revenge thriller – albeit one that benefits from a wildly inventive surfeit of style."[38] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score 69 out of 100 based on 43 reviews from mainstream critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[39] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[40]
A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote:
Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times called Kill Bill: Volume 1 a "blood-soaked valentine to movies. ... It's apparent that Tarantino is striving for more than an off-the-rack mash note or a pastiche of golden oldies. It is, rather, his homage to movies shot in celluloid and wide, wide, wide, wide screen — an ode to the time right before movies were radically secularized." She also recognized Tarantino's technical talent, but thought the film's appeal was too limited to popular culture references, calling its story "the least interesting part of the whole equation".[41] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 4 out of 4, describing Tarantino as "effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique". He wrote: "The movie is not about anything at all except the skill and humor of its making. It's kind of brilliant."[42]
Cultural historian Maud Lavin states that the Bride's embodiment of revenge taps into viewers' personal fantasies of committing violence. For audiences, particularly women viewers, the character provides a complex site for identification with one's own aggression.[43]
Uma Thurman received a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination in 2004. She was also nominated in 2004 for a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, in addition with four other BAFTA nominations. Kill Bill: Volume 1 was placed in Empire Magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time at number 325 and the Bride was also ranked number 66 in Empire magazine's "100 Greatest Movie Characters".[44] Neither Kill Bill movie received any Academy Awards (Oscars) nominations.
| Awards | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Award | Category | Recipient(s) | Outcome |
| 57th British Academy Film Awards | |||
| Best Actress | Uma Thurman | ||
| Best Editing | Sally Menke | ||
| Best Film Music | RZA | ||
| Best Sound | Michael Minkler, Myron Nettinga, Wylie Stateman, and Mark Ulano | ||
| Best Visual Effects | Tommy Tom, Kia Kwan, Tam Wai, Kit Leung, Jaco Wong, and Hin Leung | ||
| 9th Empire Awards | |||
| Best Film | Kill Bill: Volume 1 | ||
| Best Actress | Uma Thurman | ||
| Best Director | Quentin Tarantino | ||
| Sony Ericsson Scene of the Year | The House of the Blue Leaves | ||
| 61st Golden Globe Awards | Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama | Uma Thurman | |
| 2004 MTV Movie Awards[45] | Best Female Performance | Uma Thurman | |
| Best Villain | Lucy Liu | ||
| Best Fight | Uma Thurman vs. Chiaki Kuriyama | ||
| 2003 Satellite Awards | |||
| Best Art Direction/Production Design | Kill Bill: Volume 1 | ||
| Best Original Screenplay | Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman | ||
| Best Sound | Kill Bill: Volume 1 | ||
| Best Visual Effects | Kill Bill: Volume 1 | ||
| 30th Saturn Awards | |||
| Best Action/Adventure Film | Kill Bill: Volume 1 | ||
| Best Actress | Uma Thurman | ||
| Best Supporting Actor | Sonny Chiba | ||
| Best Supporting Actress | Lucy Liu | ||
| Best Director | Quentin Tarantino | ||
| Best Screenplay | Quentin Tarantino | ||
| Genre Face of the Future | Chiaki Kuriyama |
See main article: article and Kill Bill: Volume 2. A direct sequel, Kill Bill: Volume 2, was released in April 2004. It continues the Bride's quest to kill Bill and the remaining members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Volume 2 was also a critical and commercial success, earning over $150 million.[46] [47]
Kill Buljo is a 2007 Norwegian parody of Kill Bill set in Finnmark, Norway, and portrays Jompa Tormann's hunt for Tampa and Papa Buljo. The film satirizes stereotypes of Norway's Sami population. According to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, Tarantino approved of the parody.[48]
The Pussy Wagon vehicle from Volume 1 made a cameo in the music video for Lady Gaga and Beyoncé's 2010 song "Telephone" at Tarantino's behest.[49] The 2023 single "Kill Bill" by the American singer-songwriter SZA was inspired by the film.[50]