Word: assassin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Thurman is no longer in the early part of her career. She hasn't been in a multiplex movie since The Avengers in 1998 and admits she would like a defining film role. She couldn't have chosen a stranger one than the Bride, the nameless assassin in Kill Bill (the film will be released in two parts; Volume 1 will be out Oct. 10, and Volume 2 arrives in February 2004) whose mission is only slightly more complicated than the title. "It's a movie about a woman who challenges five people to duels. That's pretty much...
...other guy's probably as incompetent as you." Equally important, the level of Rocky fantasy fulfillment is high: the ceremonial weigh-ins. The bucket to spit in. The theme song when you enter the ring. The nicknames. (Where else could a middle-aged white guy be called "Baby-Faced Assassin"?) The sport has become ubiquitous enough that it's reached the agony-aunt columns. In June a woman wrote in to the Daily Star newspaper's "Just Jane," terrified her banker boyfriend was going to get hurt boxing. Jane's advice: "Once your pretty-boy boyfriend has been seriously whacked...
...film's plot is as streamlined as its combat. Zatoichi (Kitano) wanders into a village beset by gangs, one of which has hired a lethal samurai (Tadanobu Asano) to wipe out its enemies. Meanwhile, a geisha assassin and her brother, a female impersonator, seek revenge on the criminals who slaughtered their family. Zatoichi ends up in the middle. This is a film designed to get to the payoff as fast as possible, and that payoff is bloodier than a hematology convention. Hyperviolence is not new to the Zatoichi oeuvre, but Kitano does Katsu one, two or 11 better. To Kitano...
...workaholic who sleeps three hours a night, Dichter, 50, who is married and has three children, headed the Shin Bet's Gaza operations before he was chosen in 1995 to rebuild the organization's VIPprotection unit following the lapses that enabled an assassin to kill Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that year. Dichter was promoted to the top job in 2000 by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak. When the intifadeh broke out five months into Dichter's five-year term, he initiated a string of high-profile counteroperations that impressed Sharon even before he became Prime Minister. To kill Hamas operatives...
...Karachi is a city of predators, says M.R., the assassin. He complains he barely makes a profit after he has paid off the cops, government contacts and his political protectors. His cell phone chimes. After taking the call, he says almost apologetically, "I have dozens of boys working for me. I try to make sure they each get a 'job' at least once every two months." Then he stubs out his cigarette and slips out of the apartment, trailing two armed thugs for protection. Karachi isn't safe at night, not even for a killer with connections...