Title: Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
Describe This Movie In One Taken Quote:
BRYAN MILLS: But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.
Brief Plot Synopsis: Everybody was kung fu fighting.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 4.5 Drunken Masters out of 5.
Tagline: “Uncut. Unrated. And shown in its entirety.”
Better Tagline: “Tougher than Hanzo steel.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Left for dead at her own wedding, the Bride (Uma Thurman) wakes from a four-year coma and, believing her unborn child to be dead, sets out to exact vengeance on her former colleagues. These lethal assassins — including O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Vernita Green (Vivica A . Fox), and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) — are all just appetizers before she gets to the man who actually put a bullet in her head: Bill (David Carradine).
“Critical” Analysis: Quentin Tarantino’s fourth movie was initially clove in twain thanks largely to Harvey Weinstein. In one of the few cases in which you should give the convicted sex offender credit for anything, Weinstein convinced QT to split his four-hour opus into two viewer-friendly chunks. This ended up being a wise (and profitable) decision (they grossed over $300 million in total). Of course, Weinstein was notorious for hectoring directors into trimming their films, so let’s not chalk this up to cinematic genius.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody affair mixes the story up somewhat while adding in a few new wrinkles. We’ll get to those later. Suffice to say this unified version effectively combines Tarantino’s love of old school kung fu and spaghetti Westerns with top-tier performances and stellar fight choreography, courtesy of Hong Kong legend Yuen Woo-ping.
The movies also mark a jumping off point for when Tarantino started to get a little more self-indulgent. Opinions vary on stuff in Kill Bill that doesn’t really move the plot forward. I’m pretty “meh” on Budd’s (Michael Madsen) strip club shenanigans and Carradine, who never projected the menace that was supposedly his character’s trademark. Maybe you don’t like O-Ren Ishii’s anime interstitials or the Hattori Hanzo sequence. In the case of the former: fair. For the latter: you clearly have no taste.
Reasonable people can disagree on how much of Tarantino’s catalog comprises homage and how much is outright theft. Opening with the ShawScope logo, and including noted Shaw Brothers alumni like Gordon Liu (as Johnny Mo/Pai Mei), or Japanese greats like Sonny Chiba and Jun Kunimura (Boss Tanaka), tilts one to “homage.” Certainly, the Pai Mei/Five Point Palm Exploding Heart stuff is an amusing shout-out to the kung fu cinema heyday of the 1970s.
And there’s little outright theft, a al Reservoir Dogs/City on Fire. The House of Blue Leaves bears striking similarities to 1973’s Lady Snowblood, which Tarantino cited as a major influence, anyway. What makes his lifting from the French New Wave (Pulp Fiction) or spaghetti Westerns (Django Unchained) forgivable is his skill. Personally, I cut him more slack for his later movies, because they’re where he truly showed he’s not merely ripping those originals off. He’s sampling from others, but still folding those ingredients into his own stories.
Back to the subject, this recombinant Kill Bill is an impressive achievement. Tarantino deserves a lot of credit, sure, but it’s impossible to overstate how much Uma Thurman carries it. The Whole Bloody Affair really showcases the journey the Bride/Beatrix Kiddo endures to wreak her vengeance. Uniting both halves also emphasizes what an accomplishment the entire effort is. Kill Bill always sat pretty high in my QT rankings. After watching Volumes 1 and 2 in their gory entirety, it may be at the top.
So What’s Different?
The plot, never linear to begin with, is both more and less so here. The Whole Bloody Affair does start with the murder of the Bride in the church, but Elle’s abortive attempt to poison her takes place after the fight with Vernita, which is now the first scene of the movie. There are more interstitials, always QT’s indulgence, but more so in a four-hour plus movie.
Among the biggest differences is the House of Blue Leaves sequence. Originally shot in black and white to escape an NC-17 rating, the battle with the Crazy 88s is now in all its sanguinary glory. Cinematographer Robert Richardson’s colors (not just the blood) really pop, making it a worthy alteration. The second big one is the addition of another of O-Ren Ishii’s anime origin stories. This one follows her murder of Boss Matsumoto, in which she kills his sleazy lieutenant.
Aside from some updates to the narration and an added intermission, the movies aren’t noticeably different. But putting the entire thing together really drives home how accomplished the entire effort is. What elevates it is a career-defining performance from Uma Thurman and one of the last examples of Tarantino not taking himself so seriously.
Kill Bill: The Whole Blood Affair is now streaming on Prime Video.