The movie Quentin Tarantino says contains “the greatest stunts ever”
Some things in life are plain and simple: the sky is blue, the grass is green, Nicolas Cage is a maverick, and Quentin Tarantino loves an action movie. Creating one of the best action flicks of modern cinema in the form of 2003’s Kill Bill, the director certainly knows a thing or two about the industry, citing the likes of Michael Mann, Brian De Palma, Sergio Leone and Samuel Fuller, who each liked to dabble in the genre, as some of his favourite filmmakers of all time.
Indeed, almost each and every one of Tarantino’s movies involves some aspect of action filmmaking, whether it’s the tense face-off scene in Reservoir Dogs, the shootout that kicks off his Palme d’Or winner Pulp Fiction, or the epic grand finale of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where the director excitedly rewrites the history books. Still, it wasn’t until 2003 that he would go the whole hog with the genre.
Telling the story of the Bride, played by Uma Thurman, who seeks revenge on the assassins who tried to take her life, Kill Bill is a passionate ode to the kung-fu movies of the late 20th century. Featuring bombastic action scenes and over-the-top graphic violence, the movie thrives thanks to brilliant performances from the likes of Thurman, Lucy Liu, David Carradine and Michael Madsen.
Thurman’s bride in the movie was directly inspired by Michelle Yeoh’s role in an obscure kung-fu flick from 1992 named Police Story 3: Super Cop, starring Jackie Chan as a maverick police officer.
Enamoured by the movie, Tarantino once called it: “A film that I think probably contains the greatest stunts, and that’s even including Buster Keaton, the greatest stunts filmed in any movie ever. Look no further than Michelle Yeoh jumping a motorcycle onto a speeding train.”
The third movie in the celebrated Police Story series, Super Cop tells the story of a Hong Kong detective who teams up with a Chinese counterpart to stop the activity of a drug gang. Seen as a classic of kung-fu cinema and of Chan’s career, the film also starred a number of memorable names, including Wah Yuen, Kenneth Tsang and Maggie Cheung, but it would make a name for the co-lead star, Yeoh.
Speaking years later about Tarantino’s effect on her own career, Yeoh recalled asking the filmmaker why he didn’t cast her as the lead in Kill Bill, with the director humorously responding: “Who would believe that Uma Thurman could kick your ass?”.
Suffering a bad accident on the set of the 1996 film The Stunt Woman, Yeoh also shared how Tarantino had encouraged her to return to the industry, recalling: “I thought I broke my back. I thought I was paralysed. Every breath was agony.”
Continuing, she added, “I must say, Quentin, he’s persistent…He is who he is today because he’s full of passion and love, so he wore me down…I thought, ‘Maybe I’m not ready to give up on this.'”
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