Word: yakuza
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Short panchi paama (kinky-permed) hair, mustache, goatee, sideburns, a bright red, shiny satin jacket with a gold embroidered dragon, matching red polyester jersey pants and sandals?this is classic yakuza garb. If you are unlucky enough to come across someone like this in Shinjuku's back alleys, the best advice is to avoid eye contact, hold your breath and keep walking...
...parts, like many a Shaw Bros. thriller of Hong Kong's golden past, Kill Bill is an effusion of movie love by the prime nerd-curator and hip creator of cult action films. Kill Bill is his thank-you note to the Hong Kong kung-fu epics, Japan's yakuza gangster dramas and '70s Italian westerns and horror films that shaped his sensibility...
...icons (Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu) and parse the stunt direction by Hong Kong master Yuen Wo-ping. They will speculate that Ishii, the name of the gang boss played with silky gravity by Lucy Liu, is Tarantino's nod to two cult directors: Teruo Ishii, who did some prime yakuza films in the '60s and made the Joy of Torture sadomasterpieces, and Takashi Ishii, whose girl-on-a-revenge-tear Black Angel films were released...
...tough character, but he's not stupid, and he grants it when you score a point." Still, during the eight weeks of shooting required for Kill Bill's 20-minute finale--a blood orgy that pits the Bride against O-Ren Ishii (played by Lucy Liu) and 88 yakuza--Thurman confesses, "I kind of treated it like a silent film...
...Hubris meets poetic justice when Jessica's mark turns out to be a yakuza kingpin, and the arrivistes find that they?not the locals?are the na?fs. The story clips along as the kidnappers scramble to salvage their plan, but the breathless blow-by-blow narration leaves little room for the main characters to evolve beyond textbook-case stupid Americans. By the time the mobsters close in, we're rooting for a speedy end to the fiasco. In that, at least, the novel delivers...