Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kai Lord" data-source="post: 1489387" data-attributes="member: 3570">And for me, this is all Kill Bill really is.  The clever Tarantino soliloquies, the reverent homages to various genres, the great performances don't elevate the story itself above that of a pissed off woman murdering and maiming everyone who wronged her so horribly.  Its I Spit On Your Grave for a wide audience.  The second volume isn't quite so foul as the first, but I don't find anything redeeming to take from the film when you get up and leave the theater.  Its fun to talk about how funny this scene was or how intense and exciting that scene was, but I take those segments individually.At the end of the day its just one murderer who murders a bunch of other murderers because they tried to murder her.  She doesn't grow or evolve and certainly isn't "redeemed" at any point in the story.  In fact she degenerates from the bride who wanted to put all that behind her in the wedding chapel back down to the vengeful murderer she no longer wanted to be in the first place.  And she's rewarded for it with a care free drive off into the sunset.Vivica A. Fox told her point blank that she was a different person when she helped kill her wedding party, and now had a separate life and an innocent daughter, but Beatrix didn't care.  She said "I'm still rational, I'm just without mercy, compassion, or forgiveness," and murdered Fox in her own home in front of her young daughter.Gogo and the Crazy 88's didn't wrong Beatrix in any way whatsoever but she slaughtered them because they tried to protect their leader.  Just because they were all "bad" doesn't give her the right to murder.  We're obviously meant to see good in Beatrix due to her plea with Gogo to walk away so she wouldn't be killed and her allowance of the young Yakuza to run home to his mommy.But that was a tiny part of her consciousness she rarely indulged, and ultimately forsook.  Why didn't she walk away from Gogo?  Come at O-Ren another time, another way?  Why not charge O-Ren when she heard the motorcycles of the Crazy 88's approaching?  Because she was pissed, was going to savor every kill, and she enjoyed it!  She even said as much when under Bill's truth serum.  She took great satisfaction in her revenge, and wasn't the least bit remorseful, even at the end.The only way Beatrix solved problems was by killing them.  Bill assessed her character perfectly, she was a killer "in disguise" as a regular woman pretending to want a normal life.  The scene with the truth serum was the one moment where the film could have revealed a change in character, or a shred of guilt or remorse, or anything at all about her other than the vengeful, murderous traits we knew she indulged in.Imagine Bill's reaction if she said "no" or "not anymore" when he asked her if she took satisfaction in her murderous rampage?  What an amazing revelation that would have been for him.  To learn that while she had a talent for killing, she didn't love it, and it wasn't the core of her being, and that he in fact had been robbing her all those years of her true identity.  It just could have been something more, but in the end, Bill was right, she was a killer, took great satisfaction in killing, and only needed an excuse to kill.  Bill's horrible crime was her excuse.  I really don't think the film was about relationships at all.  It was all about revenge, from the opening Klingon proverb, to Sonny Chiba's philosophical contemplations ("Revenge is not a straight line, its a forest") to the undefined future (when Viviva Fox's daughter comes hunting for Uma.)Its too bad there just wasn't anything to elevate the film above it.</blockquote>

Verification