Kill bill boss koji5/9/2023 Grab a briefcase - it’s got a sticker on the handle, you can’t miss it. Get on the bullet train heading out of Tokyo, the disembodied voice on his phone tells him. His handler, Maria, has started him off on something simple. Thanks to some time off and therapy, however, he’s ready to roll again. He’s had some bad luck on a few jobs, which has given him a bit of a Job complex he’s convinced some higher power has cursed him for reasons unknown. At the center of it all - in more ways than one - is Ladybug, a professional killer coming off a personal funk. A candy-colored concoction of carnage with a substantial body count and even higher empty-calorie count, director David Leitch and screenwriter Zak Olkewicz’s attempt to weave the book’s intersecting narratives into a singular piece of pulp fiction has a tendency to jump the rails at regular intervals. The man has not just aged well, he’s aged perfectly for the screen.Īnd Pitt can still carry the weight of a movie on those protein-shake shoulders, which is good, because Bullet Train needs a lot of carrying. It’s been three decades since a walking, talking abs-delivery-service sauntered into Thelma and Louise. What connects them is a performer who’s figured out exactly how to use an autumnal presence to his advantage without pandering or playing things up. Peruse the past seven years’ worth of acting work: neo-vanity projects ( By the Sea) and old-school star vehicles ( Allied), the lows ( War Machine) and the nosebleed highs ( Ad Astra and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in the same year!). But it’s that last guy, the just-shy-of-sixtysomething Hollywood elder, who keeps edging his way into this particular spotlight. You get every single one of them in Bullet Train, the ballistics-and-whistles blockbuster adaptation of Kotaro Isaka’s 2010 crime novel about a commuter train filled with killers there’s a lot of Brad for your buck here. Or rather, the whole repertory company of Brad Pitts - the leading man who chased kooky character-actor roles, the matinee idol who stopped worrying and learned to love movie stardom, the wild-card outlier, the endlessly snacking comic relief, the grungy sex symbol, the All-American Adonis next door, the A-list veteran who lets his supernova aura do the talking. It explores territory many others haven't, is loaded with memorable scenes and characters, and a piece of cinematic paradise in terms of the showdown between The Bride and the Crazy 88's.Let us now praise Brad Pitt. Kill Bill is at it's root, a revenge flick, but at the same time so much more than just that term. And finally, Bill, who has very little screen time in this first volume, but is masterfully portrayed by David Carradine who seems to be just as good as his half-brother at portraying a maniacal but composed deadly killer. Fox all play fellow members of the Deadly Vipers and succeed in establishing that O-Ren Ishii, Elle Driver and Vernita Green are all worthy of the "badass mofo" informal title which comes with being a former Deadly Viper. Quentin's casting choices for Kill Bill don't drop the bar either - Uma Thurman returns to the "Tarantinoverse" as The Bride, after previously playing Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction, as does Michael Madsen after previously appearing in Reservoir Dogs as the sociopathic Mr Blonde. Quentin doesn't just want to make films seriously, he also knows that he can also have fun during the process which is something that a few directors twice his age at the time of Kill Bill have yet to understand or even grasp at it's base sense. Likewise, Tarantino as always adds fantastic dialogue which especially helps the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad during the backstory segmints of the movie. It's a revenge flick with a lot of different elements, but it doesn't try to be something else, or pass itself off as a grand odyssey. The brilliance that lies in Kill Bill is that it doesn't overreach itself. The colours and look of the film are all very exaggerated and oversampled, i'm not going to lie, but with such a masterfully woven story, the two go together like Eggs and Bacon, although I doubt highly that Samurai swords are edible. Here was have Tarantino at his flashiest but supplemented with a reservoir of substance which endures throughout the film. The entirety of Volume 1 is very much a build up that never fully stops, which is unique even to revenge flicks as they usually ebb and flow with a lot of changes to the pace. 1 is by far the stronger half of the duo. We had it with Reservoir Dogs, a heist film where we never see the heist, and with both Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds - two more films which take what is typical and throw it aside.Īfter multiple views, I still say that Kill Bill Vol. If there's one thing we've learned about Quentin Tarantino as a screenwriter and director is that one should never expect a typical movie that fits the stereotypes of the genre exactly - or even remotely.
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