New York Times April 11, 2004
Charting the Tarantino Universe
By DAVE KEHR

EVER since "Kill Bill Vol. 1" was released last October, Internet movie message boards have been buzzing about the numerous references that Quentin Tarantino's action revenge film makes to the rich tradition of Asian genre filmmaking — both Hong Kong kung fu movies and the Japanese swordfight flicks. With the release on Friday of "Kill Bill Vol. 2," Mr. Tarantino's grand design becomes clear: where the first part of his epic took place under the sign of the East, the second is largely devoted to the West — that is, the American and European traditions of revenge movies, particularly the American western.

With the dense network of references in "Kill Bill," Mr. Tarantino is at once playing a game and making a point, demonstrating how Eastern and Western popular culture have so strongly influenced each other over the years that the new style in action filmmaking is an inseparable blend of the two. Just as the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa acknowledged borrowing from John Ford's American westerns for his 1954 epic "The Seven Samurai," so did the Italian director Sergio Leone borrow from Kurosawa's 1961 swordplay film "Yojimbo" for "A Fistful of Dollars," the film that gave rise to the spaghetti western. "Kill Bill" closes the circle, bringing Asian, European and American influences together into a glorious, crazy, rousing and finally quite poignant meta-movie.

It isn't necessary to get all of Mr. Tarantino's references — many quite esoteric — to enjoy "Kill Bill," but a little background information does enhance the experience. The notes below are meant to suggest a few points of entry into Mr. Tarantino's sprawling work. They are by no means exhaustive.

THE EAST ("Vol. 1")

SONNY CHIBA In Mr. Tarantino's screenplay for "True Romance," Christian Slater's character sneaks off to a double feature of Sonny Chiba films — "The Streetfighter" and "The Return of the Streetfighter," two of the most violent gangster movies ever to come out of Japan. Mr. Tarantino has matured since then, and Mr. Chiba's glowering presence in "Kill Bill" — played brilliantly for comedy as well as menace — now seems more of a reference to Mr. Chiba's long association with the Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, who discovered him and with whom he made several dozen samurai dramas (a snatch of music from one of the best, "The Yagyu Clan Conspiracy," can be heard in "Kill Bill"). Mr. Chiba's character in "Kill Bill," the master swordmaker Hattori Hanzo, who provides the Bride (Uma Thurman) with her weapon of vengeance, is named after a real-life samurai of the Tokugawa shogunate, first played by Mr. Chiba in a 1970's series for Japanese television.

GORDON LIU A gifted and popular star of the Shaw Brothers' kung fu films, Mr. Liu rose to fame under the direction of his brother, Liu Chia Liang, in favorites like "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin." "Kill Bill" references "36th Chamber" by casting Mr. Liu, not as the pupil he played in that film, but as the fighting master — Pai Mei, who teaches the Bride the "five point exploding heart technique." With his outrageously long white facial hair that is as firmly associated with fighting masters in kung fu films as black mustaches are with the villains in American cowboy movies, Mr. Liu is barely recognizable in "Vol. 2" — though he also appears in Vol. 1 with his familiar shaved head as the leader of Lucy Liu's Yakuza army, the Crazy 88.

LUCY LIU As O-ren Ishii, former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and current ruler of the Tokyo underworld, Lucy Liu plays a character of mixed Japanese, Chinese and American ancestry — which is, of course, the genealogy of "Kill Bill" itself. The look of her character seems based on "Lady Snowblood," a stylish Japanese swordplay film of 1973 directed by Toshiya Fujita, whose heroine is a young woman born in prison and sworn to avenge the death of her family at the hands of a group of swindlers. The haunting imagery that concludes "Vol. 1" — blood spilled in softly falling snow — comes directly from Mr. Fujita's film, as does the use of chapter titles and a cartoon sequence (Mr. Tarantino's is animated; Mr. Fujita uses the still frames of a Japanese manga comic book).

KINJI FUKASAKU The Japanese prints of "Kill Bill Vol. 1" carried a dedication to Mr. Fukasaku, a major figure in Japanese genre filmmaking who died in January 2003 after directing some 60 features. Mr. Fukasaku's work ranged from courtly period dramas (like "The Yagyu Clan Conspiracy") to outrageously violent and anarchic gangster films, like his masterpiece "Battles Without Honor and Humanity." The pounding theme music from "Battles" introduces the Crazy 88 in "Vol. 1," and feeds into the spectacular massacre that is "Vol. 1's" finale. Chiaki Kuriyama, who played a murderous Japanese schoolgirl in Mr. Fukasaku's last completed film, "Battle Royale," appears in "Kill Bill" in virtually the same role, the teenage killer, Go Go Yubari.

'LONE WOLF AND CUB' "Kill Bill" represents a rare attempt to blend the Chinese and Japanese styles of martial arts, and if Gordon Liu represents the bare-handed Chinese kung fu tradition, Sonny Chiba stands for the Japanese tradition of swordfighting, as practiced by the warriors of the samurai class. Much of the highly stylized violence in "Kill Bill" — the surgically clean decapitations, the thin, fizzy blood that sprays out from wounded bodies like cherry soda from a shaken can — comes from the ultraviolent tradition of Japanese series like "Lone Wolf and Cub" (six titles to date) and "Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman" (25 films, not including Takeshi Kitano's recent remake of the first installment, "Zatoichi"). "Lone Wolf and Cub," about a masterless samurai who wanders the countryside, pushing his infant in a booby-trapped baby carriage, resonates in "Kill Bill" with the repeated theme of innocent children bound to violent adults. And "Shogun Assassin," a 1980 dubbed digest of the first two "Lone Wolf" movies, makes a surprise appearance in "Vol. 2" as one character's dubious choice for bedtime viewing.

THE WEST ("Vol. 2")

JOHN FORD The director of "Stagecoach," "My Darling Clementine" and "The Searchers" is an important presence in "Vol. 2" from the opening minutes, in which Mr. Tarantino lovingly recreates one of Ford's favorite shots: a vast, blindingly bright Western landscape as framed through the doorway of a dark interior. As one of the creators of the classic American western, Ford established many of the thematic concerns and visual tropes that Mr. Tarantino builds on in the second installment of "Kill Bill." The wedding chapel where the attempted murder of the Bride takes place recalls many of Ford's lonely outposts of civilization, like the white frame church in "Clementine." It is also possible that the eye patch worn by Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah) is a reference to the eye patch Ford wore in his later years, though this image (see below) has multiple sources.

BUDD BOETTICHER A protιgι of Ford, Budd Boetticher brought the American western into its ironic, absurdist phase with a series of westerns he made in the 1950's with Randolph Scott — the first of which, "Seven Men From Now" (1956), provides the model for the serial-revenge plot structure of "Kill Bill." The rocky desert landscape around Barstow, Calif., the backdrop for many of Boetticher's films, is in "Kill Bill" the natural habitat of Michael Madsen's fallen swordfighter, whose name, of course, is Budd. Like many Boetticher heroes, Budd is a disillusioned fighter who has tried to retire into a solitary, private life, only to be forced into action again by unfinished business.

SERGIO LEONE Leone admitted that he was influenced by Boetticher's black humor and mercenary heroes when he created "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964), the cynical, violent and often very funny western that established Clint Eastwood as a star. The Leone work most often referenced in "Kill Bill" is "Once Upon a Time in the West," Leone's 1968 epic. Henry Fonda played a mysterious, all-powerful gunman not unlike Bill; Charles Bronson played a vengeful character named Harmonica (so called because he's always playing one) who stands behind many of the Bride's actions (themselves underlined by the harmonica theme composed by Luis Bacalov for the 1972 Italian western "Il Grande Duello"). Apparently a passionate cinephile, Budd has a poster from Richard Fleischer's 1974 Bronson vehicle, "Mr. Majestyk," hanging in his trailer.

DAVID CARRADINE Cast as the master assassin Bill, a phantom presence in "Vol. 1" who gradually materializes into an all-too-human figure in "Vol. 2," David Carradine provides a link to both of the great traditions behind "Kill Bill." His father, John Carradine, was a member of John Ford's stock company, playing smooth-talking Southern politicians and riverboat gamblers. And of course, Mr. Carradine's initial fame was as Kwai Chang Caine, a half-American, half-Chinese Shaolin monk wandering the American West in the 1970's television series "Kung Fu" (itself the subject of a Samuel L. Jackson soliloquy in Mr. Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction"). He also starred in the oddball 1978 movie "The Silent Flute" (a k a "Circle of Iron"), in a role that Bruce Lee had written for himself before his death. In "Kill Bill," Mr. Carradine is seen playing a flute, much like the one that accompanied Caine on his journeys.

DARYL HANNAH As Elle Driver, the professional assassin who is one of the targets of the Bride's campaign for revenge, Ms. Hannah introduces references outside the western framework. Her eye patch comes from "They Call Her One Eye," a 1974 Swedish (!) revenge film by Bo Arne Vibenius, a former assistant to Ingmar Bergman. Her nurse disguise in "Vol. 1" is a reference to a similar costume in Brian De Palma's "Dressed to Kill." The imposing Ms. Hannah nevertheless recalls the heroines of surreal 1950's female-centered westerns like Allan Dwan's "Woman They Almost Lynched" and Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar." Though the name Elle Driver suggests a reference to Walter Hill's terse 1978 chase classic, "The Driver," Mr. Tarantino has said that it's an inside reference to Sarah Kelly, an assistant nicknamed El Driver on the Tarantino-scripted 1996 vampire western, "From Dusk Till Dawn."

And "Shogun Assassin," a 1980 dubbed digest of the first two "Lone Wolf" movies, makes a surprise appearance in "Vol. 2" as one character's dubious choice for bedtime viewing.

Originally posted by Mondo Kane
This looks like it:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...readid=322828&