Kill Bill Volume 1 vs Enough

“Fox Force Five.  Fox, as in we’re a bunch of foxy chicks; Force, as in we’re a force to be reckoned with; and Five, as in there’s one-two-three-four-five of us.”

                                                                                    --Uma Thurman, Pulp Fiction

Kill Bill, as the credits tell us, is the fourth movie by Quentin Tarantino. It’s the movie he’s sort of always been promising, or threatening, to make. A full-on fight/action movie, in the vein of the movies from the 1970s he referenced in his previous work. If Mia and Vincent had gone to the movies instead of Jack Rabbit Slims, this is the sort of thing they would have seen, and they would have had a terrific time. Kill Bill, like its heroine, kicks ass. It’s more compact than Tarantino’s previous movies (about half as long) and more efficient in its storytelling. That’s not to say that it’s missing the wit and characterization from the previous movies, but more that it uses an amazing shorthand that is seemingly unavailable to any other director. In his other works, I always felt like QT thought he was smarter than me. I’ve loved all of his movies so far, but for the first time, with Kill Bill, I felt like he was letting me into his cool guy club. Tarantino either assumes I get all his references (I don’t) or just doesn’t care (Good. The fact that there are directors out there who are afraid I’m not going to get their movies is precisely why so many movies are terrible.)

Kill Bill has the most basic of plots. A former assassin/hit lady/bad-ass, known here as the Bride (though she’s also called by her code-name, “Black Mamba” as well as her real name, which is censored anytime someone says it.), is gunned down at her wedding after trying to go legit. Her entire wedding party is killed, and she and her unborn child are assumed to be dead as well. They’re not.

Four years later, The Bride wakes up from her coma, with a plate in her head and a grudge to settle. Her stay in the hospital has been particularly gruesome, but I’ll not reveal it here. The more of a surprise her ordeal is to you, the more you’ll enjoy her revenge.

And the Bride is all about revenge. She was previously part of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and her former colleagues are the ones responsible for her wedding day massacre. They are Vernita Green, Elle Driver, O-ren Ishii, Sophie Fatale, Budd, and of course, Bill, who led the group as a mixture of Charlie Townsend and Marcellus Wallace. One by one, the Bride aims to seek them out and make them pay for her life with theirs.

The Bride is played by Uma Thurman. If you think, because it’s Uma Thurman, that the revenge will come out through feats of luck or trickery, or that it will be filmed so that Thurman will not actually have to get her hands dirty, then you’ll be set straight about ten minutes into Kill Bill. Uma Thurman, ladies and gentlemen, is a bad-ass mo-fo. There hasn’t been a woman this fierce and focused on screen since Linda Hamilton cocked that gun with one hand. In recent memory, only Russell Crowe in Gladiator fought and raged with as much strength and intimidation as Thurman does here.

As in his other works, Tarantino plays with structure and time in Kill Bill, so that the first revenge we see enacted is not necessarily the first the Bride has accomplished (she checks them off a list as she goes). The first we see is Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), now living in a perfect 1950s pastel suburban home. She’s a mother now, and is at first mildly apologetic, but once she’s convinced that The Bride isn’t interested in patching things up, they throw down. It’s not some hair-pulling cat fight, either, but a full-on fist and knife fight. Because Quentin Tarantino loves his camera, and his camera loves Uma Thurman, the scene is meticulously framed and edited. Movies like this lately are all about quick cuts and close-ups, but Tarantino lets us see the fight play out, using the wide screen to its fullest benefit.

One down, four to go.

Next (or rather first, if we’re to believe her list) the Bride heads to Tokyo, to fight O-ren Ishii, played by Lucy Liu. We see Ishii’s origin play out in an Anime sequence that flows smoothly from and back into the live-action scenes. Normally, Anime makes me kind of drowsy; when I first heard part of Kill Bill was animated, I figured I’d be out like a light in about five minutes. To say I was wide awake is putting it mildy. Ishii has become the head of the Japanese mafia, and employs the Crazy 88 as her personal party/army, alongside her bodyguard, Go-Go Yubari. Go-Go is a teenager in a school uniform, who kills with glee and giggles while swinging a mace and chain. The Bride must fight her before moving on to O-ren, and it’s a doozy. The main set piece of the movie is the Bride taking on all 88 crazies, slicing them down in one of the most thrilling fights I’ve ever seen in a movie. Let’s put it this way: if the Bride had fought the Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded, there wouldn’t be a Matrix Revolutions, because the Agent Smiths, my friends, would be dead. There are similar scenes in Gladiator, and in a sense, Braveheart, not to mention the countless Kung-fu movies Tarantino loves so much, but none that I recall left me feeling so exhilarated and energized. I wasn’t even sure what I’d seen, but I wanted to see it again, immediately. That the slaughter of the Crazy 88 is followed by a graceful sword fight with Liu’s O-ren in a snow-globe courtyard is evidence of Tarantino’s gifts of pacing and framing.

As the Bride, Uma Thurman is incredible. Thurman has never really had to carry a movie by herself before, but she does so with wit, grace, and of course, all that bloody revenge. My favorite scene of Uma previously had been in Pulp Fiction, when she puts on “Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon” and dances around in Vincent’s coat. For a minute or so, she’s the coolest girl ever, all smooth and funny and hot. I had the same impression of her in Kill Bill, only this time it lasted ninety minutes instead of one. Thurman has been declared somewhat of a muse by Tarantino, and while I’m not sure how true that is, Kill Bill makes a fairly convincing argument in her favor. Tarantino is completely energized, keeping the story ricocheting along with narration, chapter cards, and of course, his vital, amazing soundtrack. Kill Bill rocks, and the beautiful part is it’s only half over. I have no idea what’s in store for Volume 2, besides more revenge, but I’ll be there.

And I haven’t even mentioned Darryl Hannah as the eye-patched Elle Driver (if anyone is destined for a Travolta-style Tarantino make-over, it’s her in Volume 2). Or, the Bride’s “Pussy Wagon” pick-up truck. Or Sonny Chiba as the Bride’s sword-maker. Or The 5,6,7,8s singing Japanese surfer songs. Or…

Ah, but with Kill Bill Volume 2 coming so quickly, I’ll try to pace myself with the compliments. Plus, there’s another movie out there, on your TVs, begging for attention. Like Kill Bill, Enough is a movie of female revenge. Also like Kill Bill, Enough…um…nope, that’s the only thing they have in common. Low self-esteem? Put on Enough. I promise, with just you and Enough in the room, you’re the smartest, and you’ll feel that way for almost two torturous hours.

Enough is a bad bad movie. Imagine for a second that Extremities or Sleeping With the Enemy had been filmed in a really cheesy, misogynistic and offensive way. What? You thought they were? Oh, my friend, you are in for a treat.

It’s bad.

Jennifer Lopez stars as Slim, a waitress down on her luck. Has there ever been a waitress not down on her luck in a movie? Is there ever a waitress that is just good at being a waitress, and making ends meet, and not about to be attacked in the parking lot? Just going to work and working and then going home?

Anyway, Slim meets Billy Campbell, who plays Mitch. Abusive husbands in movies almost always have cheesy nicknames, but “Slim” was already taken, so Campbell plays Mitch.

Mitch is nice to Slim, and, pretty much instantly, they’re married. We fast forward about three years (if you rent Enough, you’ll be come familiar with the words “fast forward” fairly quickly. Why not rest your finger there from the beginning, just to be safe.), and now they’ve got a beautiful house and a precious little daughter. By “precious” I mean “annoying”. We’re talking seriously annoying here. A. Noying. There’s a scene were Mitch takes the kid to the zoo, and over the phone she chirps something like “I love animals!” that had me reaching for the mute button.

Of course, and you already knew this from the ads, Mitch is a mean dude. Out of the blue, he’s cheating, and when Slim calls him on it, he becomes a monster. It’s his right to cheat, see, and also to backhand Slim. Oh, and to talk in a really weird, loud whisper, like when Homer Simpson is trying to tell a secret. It’s one of the most awkward and obvious bad guy voices I’ve ever heard. Campbell’s a pretty good actor, but after the twenty-minute mark or so in Enough, he stops the movie cold every time he opens his mouth.

Slim goes to her friends, who are sympathetic and help devise a way out. It involves a late night escape by van, where the signal is one of those “whooo….whooo…” bird calls. They give the call, and inside Slim is sneaking away. Then she gets caught! Ooh, look out Slim! Oh no, the friends don’t know! Outside, Slim’s coworker--I dunno, Nancy or something (Juliette Lewis)--says something like “She didn’t hear you. Give the signal again,” so the guy driving the van “whooo…whooo…” again, and I’m not ashamed to say, right there in my living room, I clapped for Enough.

Besides the content, Enough is paced awkwardly. Odd title cards pop up from time to time, saying things like “GET OUT” AND “YOU CAN RUN”, as if sending a subliminal message to the abused watching at home. It’s a good thing I didn’t see Enough in a theater, because “YOU CAN RUN” is probably something I would have taken literally. There are other subliminal messages in Enough, like “WEAR UGLY WIGS. WEAR LOTS OF UGLY WIGS,” and “TALK IN THE MOST RIDICULOUS BAD GUY VOICE THIS SIDE OF MONTGOMERY BURNS.” 

So, Slim is stuck in her hateful marriage, and she can run, but since Mitch is like some slasher movie villain, he always finds her, and can walk faster than she can run and so on. She goes into self-defense training, and in no time at all, is ready to kick some you-know-what. Of course, by this time she also sports a shaggy wig, like Julia Roberts wore as Tinkerbell. It looks like it’s barely staying on her head.

She tricks and traps Mitch, and they fight, and you can see the whole thing coming from miles away and it sucks and on and on.

Boo.

Enough doesn’t seem to have been made by anyone who likes movies, or women, or Jennifer Lopez, for that matter. It should only be watched with your most sarcastic friends, at the ready to provide running commentary. Enough sets its sites on empowerment, but does so in such a cheesy Lifetime rerun kind of way that Slim’s suffering and subsequent revenge are comical.

Jennifer Lopez was a bad-ass once too, in Out Of Sight. She was like Kathleen Turner or Lauren Bacall or something, all sexy and tough. Since then…well, this is what she does when she wants to look tough, I guess. Not capable or mature or smart, but just tough, by itself. It looks like there was a lot of discussion about hair (shitty, fakey fake wigs) and make-up (artful, non-swelling cuts and flesh-colored bruises) for this movie, but virtually none about the script (Cuh. Rap.). When Slim takes her weekend of self-defense training, it’s not like she becomes a good fighter, but more like she becomes a good stunt woman. And when she’s fighting, it’s not as if she’s fighting for her life, but as if she’s fighting for her life in some shitty movie and she already knows the outcome. She talks the entire time, and keeps bringing up that it isn’t murder if it’s self-defense. Really? Never? Sounds like someone went to law school in Ashley Judd’s prison.

Enough is like an Afterschool special for adults. A bad Afterschool special. For bad adults. At one point, Slim goes to the police to ask what she can do about her mean husband, and she pulls one of those “I have this friend…” stories that are so transparent that we’re waiting for the cop to say “It’s you. You’re talking about you,” but he doesn’t, because it’s, I dunno, his first day on Earth or something. When he explains the concept of a restraining order, Slim gets all suspicious, like it’s a risky new invention. I hate when a character’s intelligence level rises or falls depending on the scene. Not that anyone’s intelligence level rises in Enough. Has there ever been an abused wife storyline on, like, Seventh Heaven or something? Was it this clichéd, preachy and embarrassing? Enough is to domestic violence as Showgirls is to atom splitting. You couldn’t pay me to see Enough Volume 2.*

*Okay, you could, but it would be really expensive.

Kill Bill Volume 1: A
Enough: D-