Revenge is a dish best served cold and this week at the movies there’s revenge a plenty. After a long, tense, six-month wait, Kill Bill Volume 2 is the hottest revenge flick ever, building on the comedic ultra-violence of Volume 1 yet adding an element of pathos and philosophy as well.
Kill Bill Volume 1
, with its severed limbs and sprinkler-systems of blood, was really just a set-up, a hook. By the time Bill utters the film’s last line regarding the Bride/assassin. Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino has set the hook firmly. "Is she aware her daughter is still alive?" Kill Bill Volume 2 reels us in and delivers the final blow.Where the first film lacked dialogue this one exudes it; funny, witty, thoughtful dialogue that acts as a prelude and builds into even more amazing action sequences. The cat fight between Uma Thurman’s Bride and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah, proving she’s not that innocent) is perhaps the most savage and brutal woman on woman battle ever filmed. Where the death of Lucy Lui’s O’Ren Ishii was calm and dance-like, this rumble is more akin to a cage match between two rabid wolverines – real horror show.
Although quite watchable on its own, Volume 2 really builds on the glimpses of backstory we got in the first film and where Tarantino infused a Blaxploitation feel to Vol. 1 the new Kill Bill is more akin to Spaghetti Westerns and ’70s kung-fu flicks.
Much like in the trailer for Kill Bill Vol. 2 , action is second to dialogue this time. But talk is one of genre-bender Tarantino’s strong points and although dialogue is driving the car this time, action’s riding shotgun and the top is down.
David Carradine, who plays Bill, summed the film up as, "A kung-fu samurai spaghetti western love story." It’s all that and more. Seen as a whole, possible since Vol. 1 came out on DVD this week, Kill Bill is one of the best movies of recent years, finding new ways to use fresh, unique characters and established filmmaking techniques to reveal universal truths about age-old ideas like Love, Loss, and best of all, Revenge. The cast is stellar, the camera work superb. Proving that Tarantino is truly the best.
Johnathon Hensleigh, however, is not. He’s the director of The Punisher, the latest comic book turned movie, which also opens this week at the Village 8. The Punisher was one of my favourite comics as a teenage boy. It featured a normal guy with no superpowers who was out for revenge on any and all criminals. It was a comic full of guns and beat downs with not much character arc or underlying messages to get in the way of the carnage. The first Punisher movie (1989) was quite bad and I remember being so disappointed that they didn’t even get the costume right. Well, 15 years later it’s time for another crack at my favourite vigilante and this time at least they got the costume right, as well as the general mood.
The Punisher
is the tale of Frank Castle, ex-military man turned cop whose family is gunned down. He miraculously lives and dedicates his life to sweet revenge, first on his family’s killers then carrying on from there. This movie doesn’t stick exactly to the comic story but it’s close enough.John Travolta stars as the criminal boss bad guy, he overacts and re-hashes the role he did in Swordfish but he gets the job done. The good thing about The Punisher is that it’s strictly concerned with punishment, not wasting time on typical action movie tendencies like love subplots or character arc. As well, it’s a dark, stoic movie full of fights and grisly revenge. Some interesting comic book-esque editing and temporal leaps might not appeal to your average viewer, but I’ll bet there’s a bunch of 14 year-old boys out there who’ll be grinning like hyenas when they leave the theatre after this one.
Comic book movies are really hot right now in Hollywood and sometimes they work well ( Hellboy, Spider-Man) other times not so well, ( Hulk, Daredevil .) This time it’s hard to say, The Punisher is a straightforward movie based on a straightforward comic book. It’s action, revenge and not much else. There’s nothing wrong with that, although I suspect the intelligent viewer may end up feeling the most punished of all.
Not so much about revenge, unless you consider contemporary civilization a crime (not really much of a stretch), Dawn of the Dead is nonetheless a great movie, more of a tribute to the original 1979 classic than a straight up remake. Canadian veteran actress Sarah Polley ( Go, The Sweet Hereafter) stars as a nurse who wakes up one day to find the world gone to hell. Zombies, no longer slow clumsy apparitions, zip around killing everyone, including her husband. She narrowly escapes to a shopping mall (some would say the heart of all our problems) and teams up with a strong supporting cast who fend off the fast and furious undead together.
This Dawn of the Dead is funny and witty and full of false leads and surprises and although it comes off as the American answer to last year’s masterful Brit zombie flick 28 Days Later , this film puts a new spin on a classic dish and makes crazed, flesh-eating undead more fun than ever.
What a great week for movie fans.
At Village 8 April 16-22: The Punisher, Kill Bill Volume 2, Dawn of the Dead, The Alamo, Hellboy, Whole Ten Yards, Starsky and Hutch, Scooby Doo 2, Hidalgo, Girl Next Door.
At Rainbow Theatre April 16-22: 50 First Dates.
