 The Berseker ROSSMAN
Revenge. What does it mean? Well, to Quentin Tarantino
it means "Great fucking action movie with lots of blood,
incredible fights and wicked dialogue." To writer/director
Jonathan Hensleigh the term "revenge" means "Really
shitty action movie that butchers a genius comic book anti-hero,
bogusly bad fight scenes and the worst dialogue this side of
Attack of the Clones. Only even badder."
Thus I bring you my reviews of both Tarantino's Kill
Bill volume 2, and Hensleigh's The Punisher
(who's tagline was "The punishment begins April 16th"...
which was actually very prophetic in hindsight).
Let me start out with Kill
Bill volume 2 if you
please. Let me just say that it had everything
spastastically sweet that Kill
Bill volume 1 already had going for it (i.e. violence,
great lines, good acting, and references to specific movie
genres
out the
yin
yang),
and it even went farther in the "kick ass" factor.
Let me back up a bit. Kill Bill Volume
1 ended
with both O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green (two of the Bride's
old buddy assassins) getting their spunky hot butts handed
to them at the end of sharp pointy things. The Bride was
on her
way
to take down Budd, Bill's brother, and
then
Elle
Driver
(the
one-eyed
psycho bizatch who left the Bride alive in the hospital at
Bill's request at the beginning of volume 1).
Then there would only be Bill left.
Volume 2 starts off with what really happened
in the little wedding chapel in no-where Texas that caused
this whole revenge thing in the first place. And man let me
tell you, the Bride's wedding (well, it was a rehearsal) is
about 3 Xs worse
than
my older sister's nuptials... But that's mostly because at
least 3 more people die in
it.
Boy did Kill
Bill bring out the horror flashbacks
in me. Anyway, this wedding rehearsal is where we see Bill
on camera for the first time and get a good feel for
just
how
fucked
up the
man
truly
is. Then the massacre begins in earnest. Everybody in the chapel
(including, unfortunately, Samuel "the man" Jackson)
is left for dead and the Bride's story begins. Then we are
introduced
to Budd. Budd gave up on the assassination gig a looong time
ago, like Vernita and O-Ren, but instead of becoming domesticated
or a crime lord, Budd chose to try to atone for his past sins.
He now lives in self exile from the civilized world in a shitty
trailer in the middle of the shitty hot desert, and he works
at one of the shittiest titty bars I've ever seen (it puts
the one in From Dusk Till Dawn to shame in
pure shittiness and puke stains). He's unclogging shit-filled
toilets and getting yelled at by the coke-fiend owner for being
late to work all within his first 2 minutes on the clock. He
spends his off time ignoring his ultra-assassin brother Bill,
and drinking. Lots of drinking for Budd. But the Buddster hasn't
lost his edge yet, and he's not ready to roll over and play
dead just because the Bride is looking for revenge that she
most definitely deserves. And it is this confrontation that
brings us to perhaps the greatest part of this or any movie
ever: The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei.
See, back in the 70s and early 80s there were
a bunch of Kung Fu movies that had in their cast a vicious
character
who was the cruelest bastard of a martial artist that the world
had ever known. With his trademarked looong white beard and
eyebrows he was the great Pai
Mei.
Pai Mei
was
a complete
dick, but he knew his stuff. He was as ancient as all time,
but also as stubborn and pricky as your neighbor's 16 year-old
son who cranks his car stereo to 235 decibels as he drives
around
the neighborhood at 11 o'clock at night blasting "Gonna
Kill Whitey" rap crap like he was out on a drive-by. He's
that much of an asshole. But you'd never tell him that to his
face. Pai Mei
is the master of Bill, the Bride and Elle Driver in Kill
Bill's
universe, and it is his training session of the Bride (that
we see in the shape of a generous flashback) that got the most
laughs in the entire movie (and there were lots
of good laughs to be had). The hell that he puts her through
is just so fucked the hell up, but I was loving every minute
of it.
Oh man, but then we jump face first into the
confrontation with Elle (who if I remember correctly was the
Bride's actual sister in the original script... just not the
finished movie). This is the balls out coolest chick fight
I've ever seen. It totally puts Vernita Green's fight with
the Bride in the first volume to shame. The total bitch-viciousness
of it made me and the Wolfman shout out "Oh FUCK!" on
several occasions. It's just down and dirty, baby. Ow man,
and the
end to that brawl just.... Oh FUCK! Pain. Mucho pain.
Then there's Bill. The whole set up to the Bill
fight was great. Ingenious even. Just how the Bride finds him
and then everybody's reactions and explanations just made me
wish Tarantino wrote more than only one film every 8 years.
But, the actual battle between the Kiddo and the Billo was
over
in like nine seconds. Nine fucking seconds! Was David Carradine
just too old to do any more moves than that? Seriously, WTF?!
Buuuut, that's my only gripe of the whooooooole thing. Some
may think it's a big gripe, but in all honesty it's rather
small.
The
rest of the movie (and volume 1) completely
make up for it and then some. And not that it's a bad final
battle, just short.
There are a few observations I'd like to make
about Kill Bill volume 2, if you don't mind
(and if you do, just what the fuck are you doing here in the
first place...
You know I like to ramble). Whilest volume 1 was
all about the Japanese Samurai (both in setting and feel), volume
2 is
all about the Western. Mostly the spaghetti western, but there
are moments of good old American showdowns strewn throughout.
And the whole segment dedicated to Pai Mei and Chinese martial
arts, training films pretty much covered all the bases that
Tarantino must have been trying to honor through the course
of his imbrued opus. He even fit in one more gorgeous "Shaw
Zoom" on the Bride's eyes before all was said and done. When
I have the chance to have somebody write and direct the story
of my life and all the ninja assassination attempts, the wronged
love affairs, and all the robot killings, I want it to be Quentin
Tarantino. The man sure know how to make a fanboy movie for
the masses.
The Punisher review.
So, Kill Bill volume 2 was
totally worth the 6 month wait that we all had to endure since volume
1 was first
released to a theater near you. Unfortunately The Punisher wasn't
even worth the wait between the time I gave the cashier my
money and she gave
me
back my ticket. It was the pure definition of "suxor". "Is
it really all that bad," you ask, "or are you just
comparing it to KB and think it sucks when
measured in the same light?"
No, it's not all that bad. Bad isn't a bad enough word. It
is so godawfully terrible that it will make your eyes bubble
with puss-filled blisters of suckiness while your ears try
to pop their own eardrums so that they won't have to listen
to crap like "Vaya con dios", "Oh, I think God's
gonna sit this one out." Could have been a cool line I
guess, but the guy
who
plays
Frank
Castle (aka the wannabee Punisher) makes it sound like C3-PO
trying to act tough even though he's really just a gold, gay
droid.
Take all the crappy dialogue and all the annoyingly
retarded, apartment crack-tennents (I swear, there are like
30 lame as hell neighbors that Frank has when he's living in
the
ghetto, and each is a worse racial, or just plain annoying,
stereotype than the previous one) out and the Punisher still
blows John Travolta's lame Scientology-shrunken balls. Not
that the comic book Punisher was the greatest
(evil) hero ever, but at least he was one tough s.o.b. The
REAL Frank Castle had tragic
beginnings. His kid and wife were gunned down in the crossfire
of a gang shooting. The LAME-COCK movie Punisher had HIS ENTIRE
EXTENDED FAMILY purposefully blown the fuck up because of some
wallowing mob bitch who was whining over her dead son. Quite
literally overkill. The REAL Punisher was in-fucking-sane.
He crossed
the line that Batman walks nightly a looooong time ago. The
comic Punisher kills "bad people" whom the big time
superheroes (i.e. Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men)
ignore in
order to go after the well known mutants and super powered
uber-villains. He's pissed at everybody for letting the world
go to shit like
it has. He thinks he is the voice and the hammer of justice.
The FAKE LAMER movie Punisher just wants revenge. Now, that
could make a good movie in and of itself, but it's not what
the Punisher is or does. The REAL Punisher in psycho. The world
is black and white to him. You are either purely innocent or
totally, evilly wrong, and therefore in need of punishment.
Also, one of the things that kind of pissed me
off is that the FAKE ASSCOCK movie Punisher is a complete pussy
most of the time. Not only does he get his glutteous maximus
handed to him for a good portion of the film, but his nemesis
in the movie (John Travolta as Saint) is even more pathetic
than he is. You just have a feeling that if the two of them
had all of their weapons taken away and were locked in a small
room together they'd just start sissy-slapping eachother till
one
started crying for his mommy. This CRAPPY SAPPY Punisher movie
makes the really shitty Dolph Lundgren 1989 straight-to-video
version look like the fucking Godfather Part II.
Hell, it even makes Roger Corman's Fantastic Four look
like it was crafted by Spielberg and Shakespeare's story-telling,
genius love child. Man, at least Dolph was pretty cool in the
role. Sure he may have spent 90% of the movie driving his chopper
around in the sewers, but
he fucking took out the Japanese yakuza! From what I remember
(and my memory of it is made even better in comparison to the
2004 Punisher shitfest) he killed ALL of the
fucking yakuza. ALL of them. And the '89 version had Louis
Gossett Jr. in it
long before he went all sniper on
everybody. Louis is B-A-D ass.
So, unless you want to wait until it comes out
on DVD and make a drinking game out of its sucktitude with
your friends (who knows, you might actually enjoy its ending
that way), skip the punishment. Stick instead to the tale of
revenge that actually makes you smile and cheer: Kill
Bill.
So,
what did I think of the blood-filled Kill Bill
volume 2?
I find that I have to give it an even more incredible
334.36106 out of 340.10002 Points of Rossman Revenge. It
is possibly even better than volume 1, and
it actually improves upon the original script that I read all
those years ago. Still no Yuki or any of her revenge,
but who knows... We might still get Quentin to shoot that
footage and put it on a Super Special Hyper Edition DVD
collection someday. As for the Punisher....
Well, he punished all right. Only he didn't just punish
his enemies. He punished
the shit out of my brain. The Punisher only gets
128.0000001 out of 340.10002 Points of Rossman Revenge. It
made me want to get revenge
on him. It made me long for Batman
and Robin.
As an afterthought, I just wonder this one
thing... What the fuck was the big deal of the Bride's name?
Why did Quentin have to "Bleep" it for the first 3/4ths of
the story? Was it just to make us go "Oh! So when Bill called
her 'Kiddo' this whole time he was calling her her real name,
not a nickname... I get it."... Was it just to get that whole
"Trix are for kids"
quip between O-Ren and the Bride in the first one? Really,
that name means nothing to me. There was no reason to "Bleep" it
out.
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The
DiVAS WOLFMAN
Okay, Kill BIll 2 was pretty
good and all that, but that whole Chinese teacher thing was
just too much for me to
handle. See, I think that it all goes back to my fourth grade
teacher, Ms. Wendiglo. She was a real cunt and a half. Pai
Mei just reminded me waaaay too much of her (right down to
that beard). Gawd, I wanted her dead. Problem was, whenever
anybody tried to assassinate
her she'd always catch us red handed and make us sit in the
corner through recess. I missed 37 recesses that entire fucking
year.
Both me and Mark Keys teamed up to try and shoot
her in the ear with paperclips fired by rubberbands on more
than one occasion. Then there was that time that we threw
14 cats on her as she walked in the door hoping that one would
scratch her eyes out or cause an allergic reaction that would
make her suffocate to death. I think she ate them all. Then
that one assassination attempt that almost got me in a shitload
of knee-deep fecal matter was my last pathetic attempt ever.
I tied one end of
a string to the door handle to the classroom and the other
end to a makeshift shelf above the door. Then I put a 25lb.
bowling ball on the shelf and waited for Ms. "Bend-it-low" to
enter and get clocked back to the stone age. Unfortunately
I set the
thing up at 3 o'clock in the morning and the first person to
enter the room was old Mr. Furley, the janitor. That sonovabitch
was the nicest person who ever treated me kind in school. He
was always there to give me advice, and help me through the
rough times like when I used the school's tractor lawnmower
to give the school mascot a haircut, and when I thought I
got Jenna Kittoss pregnant by kissing her belly button. Those
were the good old days. Kinda brought a tear to my eye as I
scraped up his brains off the floor and threw his lifeless
and broken corpse into the furnace in the basement. I will
always remember your sage advice, Mr. Furley... Especially
"Pull out before you blow your load." That was the
wisest shit anybody ever told this here Wolfman.
I give Kill Bill 2 a Wolfman Satan
Salute for
being hyperly violent. It were good and all. That "eye yankin'
and squishin'" scene was a bit too much for me though. See,
now I can't eat anything again for at least 2 hours now that
I went and thought about it again. The Punisher was... Well,
to be a bit unkind it reminded me of going to the dentist
for a cleaning, finding out you need an emergency root canal,
and then waking up with your anus hurting like somebody just
stuffed a half dozen hard boiled eggs up it. In other words,
the Punisher deserves to serve its time in Hell more than
Satan herself. It was terrible bad.
|
The Killin' CARL
Kill Bill Part 2 was sweeeeeet. Super sweet in
fact. Unfortunately its sweetness made the apparent shitness
of the Punisher that much more "diarrhea up your nostrils"
noticeable. It drove me totally fucking CRAZY! It was so bad
that it made me want to watch Travolta and Slater's Broken
Arrow in order to rinse my mind clean of the whole eye-rape-like
experience...
My brain
is
still burrrrrrrrrning!
Revenge is good. Punishment is not. The
Monkey of Madness now wants revenge against the Punisher,
but it wants
to make sweet sweet love to Kill Bill. Can you blame the hairy
little fucker?
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