The finale Quentin Tarantino called orgasmic: “The greatest cause-and-effect I’ve ever seen”
No movie by Quentin Tarantino is known for its subtlety. This is a director who knew to give the audience what they wanted whenever they walked into the theatre, and if that meant making the most intense action setpiece possible or leaving everything in a fiery inferno, he was willing to move the Earth in order to get the right shot for whatever project he worked on. Then again, that kind of euphoria that comes from seeing a Tarantino movie only happens with someone who’s experienced their fair share of thrills.
Because Tarantino didn’t invent the kind of action thrill rides he became known for, there are countless examples of some of his tropes used in classic cinema. While many people would consider a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark to be a cornerstone piece of their cinematic vocabulary, Tarantino is a classic example of someone who took all the right lessons from his heroes.
When looking at a director like Michael Bay, there is a lot of style over substance when it comes to his films. Everyone knows that they are going to see enough lens flares to blind someone and everything onscreen blowing up, but even if Tarantino has his fair share of violent movements, the reason why it always works so well is that the story behind the carnage is absolutely fantastic.
And that goes back to the films where Tarantino didn’t even understand the language onscreen. Before we had the massive franchises of action-packed films, the biggest draw for something a bit more graphic in the theatre came from the world of kung fu. Despite everyone having a certain opinion on the depiction of violence in a film like Enter The Dragon, Five Fingers of Death was the kind of movie experience that Tarantino wouldn’t have traded for the world when he saw both films back-to-back.
Even if not everyone was looking to go to the cinema for the story in this case, seeing everything naturally build over time to the final confrontation in Five Fingers of Death is an expert case in bringing a script full circle. We’re already told earlier in the movie about one’s ability to use the Iron Fist, but the minute that Chao Chih-Hao lifts his hand and shows that he’s about to unleash hell, the excitement is impossible to quantify.
As Tarantino remembers it, the energy in the theatre watching that finale was nothing short of electric, saying, “The audience lost their minds. With those audiences in that environment and coming at the end of three and half hours of martial arts mayhem and building up to that release, it was one of the greatest cause-and-effects I’d ever seen of action cinema. [It was] literally an orgasmic feeling.”
Then again, that’s the kind of pay-off any action director should shoot for. No matter if the scene ends in a shoot-out or if someone gives someone a world-class beatdown, the cornerstone of any of those fights should be built up to that moment where the audience realises the story beats happening between the punches.
And while Tarantino does have his love of martial arts movies apparent on the screen whenever a screening of Kill Bill comes on, a lot of the lessons he took from Five Fingers of Death had nothing to do with the pure punching. That’s where everything lands, but Tarantino knew that he needed to start with the story first before giving everyone that orgasmic feeling.
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