Showdown (Part I, Setting up)
Plot:
- It’s a lot smoother to transition from the Bride receiving her sword to her plane landing in Tokyo.
- The entire club sequence is cinematic brilliance, conveying a story and the stakes through images and music.
- Delaying confrontations for a while builds a lot of tension, heightening the impact when the tension bursts.
Characters:
- We know Gogo is O-Ren’s most trusted bodyguard because she’s the only one not to wear a uniform and because O-Ren trusts her to check up on a strange sound outside their VIP chamber. Show don’t tell. Better than the V.O. intro from the last sequence.
- We also learn that Sofie is not a fighter and more of a secretary, all through show not tell, making the Yakuza council sequence mostly redundant.
Lessons Learned:
- Cinema is a visual media. Look for ways to tell your story through images instead of having characters spell it out in voice over.
Showdown (Fighting the Crazy 88)
Plot:
- Simple lesson. Make sure every new contender is fiercer and more difficult than the last.
- It’s a simple matter of escalating the conflict.
- I won’t deny it, though. Easier to make this when you know you’ll have the budget.
Characters:
- Nice touch to have the Bride try to convince Gogo not to fight. As good as the Bride is at killing, she’s not a homicidal maniac like Gogo. Complexity, in other words.
- Good to inject some heartfelt humanity in violent sequences every now and then.
- And some comedy, too. The Japanese Charlie Brown and his wife provide some comic relief in the middle of so much violence.
Lessons Learned:
- This is the sword fight to end all sword fights. Whatever you do, learn from Tarantino and write scenes that will set benchmarks that other people will want to beat.
Showdown (Fighting O-Ren)
Plot:
- Sorry to say it’s kind of an anti-climax after the spectacular fight on the dance floor.
- Since spectacle wasn’t the way to go, Tarantino should have gone for more emotional stakes in this scene (as he did with Bill in Volume 2).
- What I said earlier, about establishing some sisterly bond between the Bride and O-Ren…this would have been the perfect time for a pay-off.
Characters:
- Not that the scene is bland. Far from it. There’s still palpable pain between these two as they fight and the Bride wins, but I don’t think the story went far enough to make me feel the pain.
- It’s a similar problem to the one I had with the ending of Reservoir Dogs.
Lessons Learned:
- When planning a final confrontation, it’s better to count on emotional stakes than spectacle.
- The duel between Vader and Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi has nothing on this movie far as spectacle goes, but the emotion is really strong in their final duel, and that is what I find most memorable.
Epilogue
Plot:
- Important scene for learning how the Bride knows where to find the other Vipers.
- But notice the way it’s framed. With faceless Bill consoling a distraught and frightened Sofie.
- So while the exposition goes on, we wonder what Bill will do to Sofie after she’s done telling her story. He does nothing, but the wait is not in vain, because Bill has a shocking reveal for the audience. Another use of implicit promise to hold our attention.
- Notice the pay-off of discovering where the Hit List came from.
- And again Tarantino surprises us by giving us the impressive climax we wanted and throwing in a little bonus: the Bride’s daughter is alive.
Characters:
- Bill’s gestures (smoothing out Sofie’s hair) and soft voice and words sell his character beautifully, explaining also why women like Elle and the Bride fall for him. Economy and subtlety, my friends.
Conclusions:
- A movie that always knew where it was going and had clear goals to keep it from shooting off in a hundred different directions.
- Great ambition coupled with outstanding execution. First-rate use of mood, urgency, stakes, and character development.
- One of Tarantino’s finest.
Final Grades
Plot:
- Well focused and, barring some questionable use of backstory (which in and of itself was always well-paced and interesting), near flawless in its execution.
- Grade: 4/5
Characters:
- I thought the ones in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were memorable, but the ones in this movie belong in a pantheon.
- They all feel distinct, and their potentials fully realized.
- That being said, it is much easier to write compelling larger-than-life characters than down-to-earth but still compelling characters. For that alone, I must reduce the grade by one.
- Grade: 4/5
Movie Score: 8/10
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