Is it wrong that a cottage-flower-chintz-garden-loving middle-age suburban woman can’t resist watching Kill Bill anytime it happens to be on? Say, after watching America’s Got Talent on a Wednesday night and aimlessly flipping channels at 10:00 p.m. and finding said Bill only an hour into it? Just as Beatrix (aka The Bride, aka Black Mamba, aka Uma), in a flashback while she’s buried alive, is climbing the steps to meet Pai Mei, her sadistic teacher/master, for the first time?
I admit it — this exceedingly violent, often disturbing, and oddly entertaining film series (Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2) is among my favorites.
Just hearing Uma tell Daryl (Hannah, aka Elle, aka California Mountain Snake) “Bitch, you don’t have a future.” is enough to send me over the edge with glee.
I’m sorry.
And don’t get me wrong: I don’t normally like violent, bloody movies. I am forever remembering that Pulp Fiction was the first and only movie I had to physically restrain myself from walking out on, so it’s not that I’ll watch anything Quentin Tarantino.
But there’s something about these movies — How positively kick-ass Uma is… How funny the dialog is (The amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan. You know, I’ve always liked that word…”gargantuan”… so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence)… How Grasshopper-meets-Jackie-Chan-meets-Wonder-Woman it is — that gets me every time.
Funny thing is, I would have been just as happy to watch a Little House on the Prairie rerun. (Not that life with Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary, and Carrie [and later Grace] was bucolic — more like Weekly Trauma on the Prairie).
In any case, whoever thought up the saying “Variety is the spice of life” sure knew their stuff. Just as whoever thought up the “five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique” knew theirs.
The lioness has rejoined her cub, and all is right in the jungle.
~ closing title card, Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Writing by Ear 