Beatrix Kiddo, (played by Uma Thurman) also known as The Bride, is a fictional character in Quentin Tarantino's movie Kill Bill.Beatrix Kiddo's past
The Bride, codenamed "Black Mamba", is a former member of the "Deadly Viper Assassination Squad", an elite, shadowy group of assassins. A formidable, ruthless warrior trained under martial arts master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), she served at the right hand of Bill (David Carradine), her boss and lover, a position that provoked the furious envy of the other Vipers, especially Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), who was also Bill's lover.
Kiddo, a master of the Tiger/Crane style of kung fu, is the only Viper to learn the "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique", a method of killing an assailant by quickly striking five pressure points around the heart. Pai Mei refused to teach this technique, which was said to be 'the deadliest blow in all of martial arts', even to Bill. Kiddo's determination wins his respect and he teaches the forbidden technique.
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Kiddo abandons the dangerous life of an assassin after she learned she is pregnant with Bill's child. She finds out about it during a mission that becomes her final one and tells the assassin sent to kill her about it, thus saving her own life and her baby's. Kiddo then fakes her own death and hides in rural Texas under the name "Arlene Machiavelli" and gets engaged to a young man named Tommy Plympton (Chris Nelson). Bill finds her, however, and gate-crashes her wedding rehearsal with the other Vipers and murders everyone inside. Bill then shoots her in the head, leaving her in a seemingly irreversible coma. She remains comatose for four years, during which she is repeatedly prostituted and raped by an orderly named Buck (Michael Bowen).
Awakening just as one of Buck's "clients" is about to violate her, she kills the would-be rapist and then Buck, before beginning a mission of revenge on the other Vipers. She first travels to Okinawa, where she convinces the legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba) to come out of retirement and forge one of his peerless katana for her. After getting the sword, Kiddo (wearing a yellow motorcycle jump suit) arrived at the "House of Blue Leaves" where she faces O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu).
Kiddo encounters Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) in a washroom, where she recognizes her cellphone's "Auld Lang Syne" ringtone, and remembered her from the El Paso massacre. Kiddo captures her and brings her to O-Ren Ishii, where she cuts off her left arm, as a means of both seeking revenge on her for her presence at the massacre in El Paso and showing Ishii her intentions for a duel. O-Ren Ishii sends a few of the Crazy 88 gang and Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama) to fight and kill Beatrix; however, Beatrix kills the few Crazy 88 members and then kills Gogo. Johnny Mo (Gordon Liu) then arrived with dozens of the Crazy 88, who are then dispatched by the Bride in a brutal fight. The Bride then faces off against Ishii, but not before she tells the defeated and still living members of the Crazy 88 to leave, but also orders that their dismembered limbs be left as they belong to her now just as her arm belonged to Pai Mei. The Bride then faces off against O-Ren, climaxing in a dramatic swordfight in a snowy garden.After killing O-Ren, Kiddo then tortures Sofie Fatale for the locations of the rest of the members of the Vipers. She then sends her rolling down a hill to a hospital for medical attention so she could live on and tell Bill what had transpired, and that Kiddo is still alive.
Kiddo then finds Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), who had renounced her life as a hired killer and started afresh in a quiet suburban neighborhood with a new husband and daughter. Kiddo shows up at her doorstep and engages her in brutal hand to hand combat, though they are evenly matched and neither is able to kill the other. However, during the fight, Green's daughter Nikki comes home from school, and Kiddo is unwilling to kill Green in front of her child. Green tries to apologize for what she had done, but Kiddo is implacable. Thinking quickly, Green shoots at her with a handgun concealed in a cereal box, but misses. Kiddo quickly throws a knife at Green, killing her.
Nikki goes to the kitchen just in time to see Kiddo kill her mother. Kiddo tells the girl that it was not her intent to kill Green in front of her; and that if the young girl wishes to avenge her mother's death when she grows up, Kiddo would be waiting.
Kill Bill Vol. 2
After killing Vipers O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green, Kiddo goes after Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill's brother. Laying in wait underneath Budd's trailer, she charges in the front door only to be shot in the chest by Budd with a shotgun loaded with rock salt, so as not to kill her. He sedates her and calls Elle Driver to bargain a price for the Hanzo sword made for Beatrix, the sword being especially valuable for being brand new, made after Hattori Hanzo had retired. Budd and an accomplice then take her to a graveyard and proceeded to bury her alive. She escapes, however, and goes back to Budd's trailer where he lies dead, having been bitten by a black mamba hidden in the suitcase Driver brought that contained $1 million in return for the Hanzo sword. Driver, still in the trailer after Budd's death, engages Beatrix in a brutal battle, with neither women able to get a clear advantage over the other. Driver reveals that she had killed Pai Mei as revenge for tearing out her eye. Enraged, Beatrix tears out Elle's other eye, leaving her completely blind, and leaves Driver to (presumably) die in the middle of the desert. Beatrix then pursues her final target, Bill.
When she finds him, from information provided by Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks), she discovers that their daughter, B.B. (Perla Haney-Jardine), whom she presumed had died in utero, is alive and well. They spend the evening together as a family until B.B. goes to bed, and then Bill and Kiddo settle their differences; Bill explains his reasons for trying to kill her, while she admits she could not be happy as anything other than a warrior except, perhaps, as a mother.
At the end of their conversation, a brief fight ensues where Kiddo fatally strikes Bill using the "Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique". As Bill dies, the two forgive each other and make their peace. The Bride then disappears with B.B. in the middle of the night. The next morning, she lies on the bathroom floor of the hotel that she and B.B stayed in after she fled Bill's villa, crying, but in a state of euphoria, due to a side effect of the truth serum Bill used on her earlier.
See also
External links
- Beatrix Kiddo at the Internet Movie Database
- Beatrix Kiddo - Multiversal Omnipedia
- http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/Beatrix_Kiddo