There’s no doubt about it: Quentin Tarantino’s movies generally have a pretty masculine bent, with the plum roles played by stars such as Tim Roth, Brad Pitt, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Harvey Keitel….you get the picture. His debut masterpiece, Reservoir Dogs, didn’t even have any women with speaking lines (actress Nina Siemaszko played a police officer, but her scenes were deleted in the final cut).
That’s not to say that when he does direct female characters, he knocks it out of the park: he had a mostly female cast for Death Proof, and it’s generally regarded as his worst directorial effort.
But let’s delve a little further into the female characters in his films that really work: the action stars, the ingénues, and the comic relief.
12 Pulp Fiction (1994) - Amanda Plummer as Yolanda/“Honeybunny”
Amanda Plummer is the daughter of famed actor Christopher Plummer, and you probably can’t get further away from Captain von Trapp than with the role of Yolanda, AKA ”Honeybunny” in Pulp Fiction. A fairly demented thief who, along with her boyfriend Ringo, AKA ”Pumpkin” (Tim Roth) are attempting to hold up the patrons of a diner. She’s crass and rude and violent and utterly in love with her Pumpkin.
Perhaps they wouldn’t have embarked upon the robbery had they known that professional hitmen Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) were there, but even after Honeybunny points a gun at Jules (who admittedly is pointing a gun at Pumpkin), they are allowed to escape with their lives and even a little cash.
11 Pulp Fiction (1994) - Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace
Before she rocketed to stardom as Mia Wallace, Uma Thurman had often been reduced to playing eye candy in the movies: Henry & June, Dangerous Liaisons, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (in which she famously appeared as Venus in the nude). Mia Wallace was a new kind of role for her entirely: the bored, unhappy wife of a gangster, with a lackluster acting career that’s mostly in her past.
Her black bobbed wig reached iconic status almost immediately, paired with striking red lipstick and a simple white shirt and black pants perfect for the Jack Rabbit Slim’s twist contest. She mostly maintains a too-cool-for school persona while out with John Travolta’s taciturn hitman, turning into something of a lost little girl after nearly dying from a snort of heroin.
10 Pulp Fiction (1994) - Maria de Medeiros as Fabienne
Maria de Medeiros is a Portuguese actress, probably best known for her appearance as Anaïs Nin in Henry & June, making Pulp Fiction her second film alongside Uma Thurman. In terms of Tarantino characters, she’s a bit of an outlier: she doesn’t commit any violent acts or have anything horrible happen to her, she’s the sweet and charming girlfriend of on-the-run boxer Butch (Bruce Willis). She’s small and lovely, and you kind of wonder how she ended up with Butch in the first place.
9 Jackie Brown (1997) - Pam Grier as Jackie Brown
Although Jackie Brown wasn’t released until 1997, Tarantino’s Pam Grier obsession was evident due to a car scene in Reservoir Dogs when she’s discussed. Tarantino initially hoped to cast her in the Pulp Fiction role eventually given to Roseanna Arquette, but didn’t think audiences would buy Eric Stoltz getting away with yelling at Pam Grier.
Here, Grier is in her element as sexy flight attendant Jackie, who does some smuggling for a gun runner on the side. The movie was based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch, which is not Tarantino’s usual style, but it certainly worked in Grier’s favor, and the film ended up being a significant come-back for her career.
8 Kill Bill (2003 and 2004) - Uma Thurman as The Bride
Thurman is the heart of Tarantino’s two-volume revenge film. As the Bride, she narrowly survived the assassination of her wedding party by her ex, Bill (David Carradine), and their unborn child did not survive. The Bride goes through a myriad of traumas and emotions throughout the two films as she tears through the ranks of her former colleagues (the assassination team The Deadly Vipers), reckoning with former friends, enemies, and past loves, usually to the death.
There are also lessons to be learned along the way, with master swordsmen and martial arts experts, and she learns along that way that her child is actually still alive, which only increases her desire and determination to kill Bill.
7 Kill Bill (2003 and 2004) - Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver
Daryl Hannah’s Elle Driver, one of the Deadly Vipers, is a pretty unforgettable character. Much of her backstory is taken from a Swedish exploitation film called They Call Her One Eye, in which the main character suffers just about every horror known to man, from humiliating rapes and forced prostitution to mutilation.
Driver has her own leitmotif (a song she whistles from a 1968 British horror film called Twisted Nerve) and while the other members of the Deadly Vipers practice more of a restrained, targeted violence, Driver is clearly more on the psychopathic side. In Volume 2 we find out that her eye was removed by her and the Bride’s mutual martial arts teacher before she killed him, and this angers the Bride to the extent that she pulls out her remaining eye and leaves her locked up with a black mamba snake.
6 Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) - Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii
Lucy Liu’s yakuza boss O-Ren Ishii is tiny, delicate, graceful, and an absolute killing machine. Like the Bride, she is fueled by a lust for vengeance (the yakuza killed her parents when she was a child), and she has amassed an army to fight with her, the Crazy 88s. Her story bears marked similarities to the main character of 1973 Japanese film Lady Snowblood, and her fight to the death scene with the Bride, in a snowy garden, is nothing short of beautiful.
5 Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) - Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green
The first fight scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1 is between the Bride and Vernita, a former Deadly Viper turned butter-wouldn’t-melt housewife with a young daughter, Nikki. The kitchen brawl is in full swing when Nikki arrives home from school, and the Bride offers to continue the fight elsewhere later, but Vernita sneaks in a gunshot through a cereal box.
The Bride reacts quickly and kills Vernita on the spot. Realizing what she’s done to Nikki, the Bride tells her to seek her out when she’s older if she needs revenge. (Could be a nice way into a sequel?)
4 Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) - Chiaki Kuriyama as Gogo Yubari
You can draw a pretty straight line from Chiaki Kuriyama’s role as feisty Chigusa in Battle Royale to her casting inKill Bill Vol. 1as Gogo, a member of the Crazy 88s and personal psychopathic bodyguard to O-Ren Ishii. In her schoolgirl uniform, she looks the very picture of innocence, but just like Chigusa (to a lesser extent), Gogo is not afraid to let loose with some violence, as she proves when she walks in with a meteor hammer and the skill to use it.
She remains calm, cool, and collected until the bitter end, when the Bride whacks her in the head with a nail-studded plank and blood drips out of her eyes.
3 Inglourious Basterds (2009) - Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus
If you think you see some similarities between Kill Bill’s Bride and Shosanna, you’re right, because Tarantino initially planned Shosanna to be a Nazi-killing assassin who was a lot closer to Uma Thurman’s vengeful character. She has similar trauma in her background, her Jewish family having been slaughtered, and she’s forged a new life for herself as the owner of a cinema.
She and her boyfriend hatch a plot to kill a group of Nazis at a movie premiere, and although she meets her death before she accomplishes her goal, her projectionist boyfriend finishes the job. Mélanie Laurent plays Shosanna as a sort of avenging angel rather than a ruthless assassin, and it works beautifully.
2 Django Unchained (2012) - Kerry Washington as Broomhilda
We hear about Broomhilda long before we see her, as Jamie Foxx’s Django tells Christoph Waltz’s Schultz of his quest to rescue her from a particularly cruel Mississippi plantation. Schultz is taken with the idea of her speaking German and agrees to help him. Kerry Washington leaned hard into the role, insisting that she actually be whipped by the actor playing the overseer, and actually spending time in the torturous ‘hot box’ chamber to bring as much realism to her performance as possible.
1 The Hateful Eight (2015) - Jennifer Jason Leigh as ”Crazy” Daisy Domergue
Kurt Russell’s “Hangman” is one of a number of suspicious characters seeking refuge during a Wyoming snowstorm, although the Hangman is the only one with a fugitive handcuffed to him, “Crazy” Daisy (Leigh), whom he was escorting to her hanging. Her treatment at the hands of the Hangman and the other men caused much controversy, as they basically treat her as non-human, little more than a punching bag and a receptacle for insults, who spends the movie handcuffed and covered in blood.
But Jennifer Jason Leigh gives the performance everything she’s got, and Daisy gives as good as she gets, killing the Hangman herself and cutting off his arm in a bid to escape her shackles. The movie marked Leigh's resurgence in popularity, and garnered her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well.
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