Kill Bill: Volume 2 Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)April 22nd, 2004
KILL BILL: VOL. 2
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
It's been said that Quentin Tarantino makes terrible movies really, really well. With "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" he also seems capable of making great movies really, really badly.
The first installment of his "Kill Bill" saga (aka Vol. 1) wasn't a great film by any stretch of the imagination but it was certainly stylish (in fact that's *all* it was--plot, tension, and character development were notably absent from the former-video-store-clerk-turned-bloody-auteur’s much touted "comeback" film). Oddly enough, style seems to have been a secondary consideration for the second half of this Uma Thurman revenge vehicle, with the emphasis more on those elements missing from the first.
"Kill Bill: Vol. 2" turns out to be more talk than action and not very interesting talk at that.
It's as if, as I suspected back in October, Tarantino simply cut his self indulgent and overlong film straight down the middle--thhwwhack!--with one strike of The Bride's (Thurman) ornately detailed Hattori Hanzo sword. Many times during Vol. 2 did I feel as though I was watching outtakes from Vol. 1: all the boring stuff, all the sequences that didn't work, all the scenes that ran on way too long. Vol. 2's end titles credit performers who only appeared in the first film, supporting a median split.
Pieced together, "Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2" (even at some four hours and fifteen minutes) probably would have made for a better, more satisfying return to form. But unscrupulous marketers and, I daresay, Tarantino himself got greedy.
Conning moviegoers into paying twice to see the one film, "Kill Bill"'s promotions department figured the film would play well in two unedited chapters, but it helps to have seen V1 in order to appreciate V2. There are references and decisions and plot points in the first film that never see the light of day in the second. For example, Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad is never referred to by name. Gone are Vivica A. Fox's Vernita Green aka Copperhead and Lucy Liu's O-Ren Ishii aka Cottonmouth leaving Elle Driver aka California Mountain Snake (Darryl Hannah), Budd aka Sidewinder (Michael Madsen), and Bill aka Snake Charmer himself (David Carradine, now a flesh-and blood adversary rather than a disaffected, dislocated voice) in this second go round.
And instead of focusing exclusively on her samurai blade of choice, The Bride aka Black Mamba mixes it up a little in Vol. 2, killing wise.
But there's dull, uninvolving, unnecessary stuff here. The black-and white expository scene in the wedding chapel--kill that. The overly talky scenes in which Bill waxes metaphoric about Superman and the fate of goldfish- kill those. And scenes with grandmaster Pai Mei and Budd's strip joint boss and Michael Parks's charismatic Tijuana pimp--kill, kill, kill. "Kill Bill: Vol.2" is near on two-and-a-half hours and less happens than in the first volume, which was overlong at 111 minutes.
More so here than there does Tarantino seem more self-importantly arch, derivative, and grandiose. If Volume 1 was chop socky, Volume 2 is unashamedly chop cocky.
Revenge might well be "a dish served cold" (to quote the film's unmemorable tagline) but the lukewarm "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" feels more like the half-course meal it truly is, and not a very palatable one at that.
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David N. Butterworth
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