British postcard by Pyramid Posters, Leicester, no. PC9458, 2004. Photo: Miramax / A Band Apart.
Sonny Chiba as Hattori Hanzō and other cast members in
Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004). Caption: The 4th film of Quentin Tarantino.
On 19 August 2021, Japanese actor and martial artist
Shinichi Chiba (千葉 真一, 1939 – 2021), known internationally as
Sonny Chiba, passed away. Chiba was one of the first actors to achieve stardom through his skills in martial arts, initially in Japan and later before an international audience. Chiba's breakthrough international hit was
The Street Fighter (1974) which was brought to Western audiences (dubbed in English) by New Line Cinema. The film and its sequels established him as the reigning Japanese martial arts actor in international cinema for the next two decades.It was New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye who gave Chiba the English name "Sonny", which Chiba would adopt as his own (mostly for non-Japanese projects) from that point on. Chiba's enduring onscreen career received a tribute when he appeared in a key role as Hattori Hanzo, the owner of a sushi restaurant and retired samurai sword craftsman, in
Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003-2004). Chiba starred in more than 125 films for Toei Studios and has won numerous awards in Japan for his acting.
American martial arts film
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003) stars Uma Thurman as the Bride (code name Black Mamba), a former member of a team of assassins, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, described as "the deadliest woman in the world". She swears revenge on the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), after they try to kill her and her unborn child. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza including
Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari.
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino and actress Uma Thurman conceived the Bride character during the production of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994); Kill Bill credits the story to "Q & U". The two began talking about the kinds of films that they would like to do, and Quentin said he would like to do a 1970's style kung-fu flick. Uma came up with the film's opening shot of her beaten up and wearing a wedding gown. Tarantino spent a year and a half writing the script while he was living in New York City in 2000 and 2001, spending time with Thurman and her newborn daughter Maya. Reuniting with the more mature Thurman, now a mother, influenced the way Tarantino wrote the Bride character; he did not come to the realization that the Bride's child could still be alive until the end of the writing process. He originally wrote Bill for Warren Beatty, but as the character developed and the role required greater screen time and martial arts training, he rewrote it for David Carradine. Tarantino decided to cast Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver after seeing her performance in the television film First Target. The physical similarities between Thurman and Hannah inspired how he wrote the rivalry between the two characters. Tarantino conceived Kill Bill as a homage to grindhouse cinema, including Martial Arts films, samurai cinema, Blaxploitation, and Spaghetti Westerns. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. Tarantino revealed in an interview that the music used in Kill Bill was all from other films. He used music from his soundtrack collection. It is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production. They were planned as a single release, but the film, with a runtime of over four hours, was divided into two. Volume 2 was released the following year. Volume 1 grossed over $180 million on a $30 million budget.
A woman in a wedding dress, the Bride (Uma Thurman), lies wounded in a chapel in El Paso, Texas, having been attacked by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. She tells their leader, Bill (David Carradine), that she is pregnant with his baby just before he shoots her in the head. Four years later, having survived the attack, the Bride goes to the home of Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), planning to kill her. Both women were members of the Deadly Vipers, which has since disbanded; Vernita now leads a normal suburban family life. They engage in a knife fight but are interrupted by the arrival of Vernita's young daughter, Nikki. The Bride agrees to meet Vernita at night to settle the matter, but when Vernita tries to shoot the Bride with a pistol hidden in a box of cereal, the Bride throws a knife into Vernita's chest, killing her. Nikki witnesses the killing, and the Bride offers her a chance to avenge her mother's death when she grows up, should she choose to do so. Four years earlier, police investigate the massacre at the wedding chapel. The sheriff discovers that the Bride is alive but comatose. In the hospital, Deadly Viper Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) prepares to assassinate the Bride via lethal injection, but Bill aborts the mission at the last moment, considering it dishonorable to kill the Bride when she cannot defend herself.
The Bride awakens from her four-year coma and is horrified to find that she is no longer pregnant. She kills a man who tries to rape her and a hospital worker who has been selling her body while she was comatose. She takes the hospital worker's truck and teaches herself to walk again. Resolving to kill Bill and the other Deadly Vipers, the Bride picks her first target: O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), now the leader of the Tokyo yakuza. O-Ren's parents were murdered by the yakuza when she was a child; she took vengeance on the yakuza boss and replaced him after training as an elite assassin. The Bride travels to Okinawa, Japan, to obtain a sword from legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba), who has sworn never to forge a sword again. After learning that her target is Bill, his former student, he relents and crafts his finest sword for her, taking a month to finish the job. The Bride tracks O-Ren to the House of Blue Leaves, a Tokyo restaurant, and amputates the arm of her assistant, Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus). She defeats the Crazy 88, O-Ren's squad of elite fighters, and kills her bodyguard, schoolgirl Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama). O-Ren and the Bride duel in the restaurant's Japanese garden; the Bride gains the upper hand and kills O-Ren by slicing off the top of her head. After torturing Sofie for information about Bill, the Bride leaves her alive as a threat. Bill finds Sofie and asks her if the Bride knows that her daughter is alive.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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