![]() It’s the tale of Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman), known only as “The Bride” for most of the film. Kill Bill wants, first and foremost, to be an exciting, funny, and strangely romantic action film. Tarantino is, in many ways, the straight man’s Pedro Almodovar: a self-conscious quoter of generic traditions, fueled by the strong emotional charge inherent in disreputable cultural detritus, setting his ardour of artifice and ground-level feel for human interaction in a pas de deux as intricate as the swordplay. Deliriously entertaining, colourful, and altogether unique in its blackly hilarious melding of cherry-picked clichés and vital characterisation, Kill Bill is, at the very least, the sort of film no other director could pull off. I am glad that Tarantino remembered how cool Carradine could be, because his crocodilian charm is crucial to the success of Kill Bill, a work I make no apologies for considering one of the greatest of the decade. Carradine himself seemed surprised that he could still rise to the occasion when Tarantino cast him as the titular rogue in his colossal diptych, Kill Bill. In many ways, his career replicated that of his father, John, in becoming the sort of face cinema needs but rarely treasures Ingmar Bergman cast David in The Serpent’s Egg because of Bergman’s admiration of John. His long attachment to the half-baked TV series Kung Fu, Roger Corman, and New World Studios saw him crowned king of 1970s and ’80s trash, blotting out his best achievements. Yet Carradine’s peculiar life and death confirm that he was as a man much like the characters he often played-rootless, peripatetic in life and career, taciturn and emotionally ambiguous in image. As an aficionado of his performances in films like Boxcar Bertha (1970), Bound for Glory (1976), and The Serpent’s Egg (1978), I didn’t need Quentin Tarantino to remember for me what a great actor David Carradine could be.
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