Kill Bill: Volume 2 Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)April 21st, 2004
KILL BILL VOL. 2
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The Bride (Uma Thurman) is back and this time she's ready to deliver on the titular promise of "Kill Bill Vol. 2."
In splitting his revenge epic into two parts, writer/director Quentin Tarantino has delivered two tonally different films. While Vol. 1 was a cartoon violent action spectacular, Vol. 2 is more reflective and dialogue driven. The master of genre sampling has gone from Sergio Leone and Japanese anime in Vol. 1 to John Ford and the Shaw Brothers in Vol. 2.
After a beautiful widescreen, black and white prologue, where Uma announces her intentions directly to the camera while driving in front of rear projection, we pick up at Chapter 6, 'Massacre at Twin Pines,' and get the backstory for Bill (David Carradine, TV's "Kung Fu") and his Assassination Viper Squad's attack on the Bride. This sequence is also in black and white and references Ford's "The Searchers" as the heavily pregnant bride (really doing a full dress rehearsal we learn) finds Bill playing the flute on the chapel porch. He thought she was dead. She outlines a future working in husband Tommy's (makeup artist Chris Nelson) used record store and nervously says 'call me Arlene' before introducing Bill as her dad. Bill had said he'd try to be nice, but he 'overreacts' and we see the Viper Squad march in from a high angle long shot.
In Chapter 7, 'The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz,' the Bride is back in action stalking Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen) in his ramshackle mobile home. Budd's been tipped off by his estranged brother that the Black Mamba has taken down O-Ren Ishii and her Crazy 88's, so he's on alert, even though he believes that her revenge is justified. Surprisingly, the alcoholic loser (he's just been fired from his job as a bouncer at a remote strip club) gets the better of our heroine easily, then presents her with her most horrific obstacle. Chapter 8, 'The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei,' gives us our earliest look at the Bride as her lover Bill hands her over to the world's greatest practitioner of kung fu for training. Bill tells her about Pai Mei's ("Kill Bill Vol. 1's" Johnny Mo, "Drunken Monkey") prowess and deadly 'five point palm exploding heart' technique, then informs her that 'he hates Caucasians, despises Americans and has nothing but contempt for women.' This segment is an affectionate recreation of early fu flicks, right down to their incessant use of zooming and cheesy scoring, but it also serves to explain the Bride's ability to get out of the nightmare that ended Chapter 7, which is where Chapter 9, 'Elle and I,' begins. The duplicitous Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) has made a deal with Budd for the Mamba's Hanzo blade before her most revered opponent seemingly comes back from the dead for the ultimate cat fight. The Final Chapter, 'Face to Face,' finds the Bride, name finally revealed as Beatrix Kiddo, settling her score with Bill in a weird domestic cocoon that includes their daughter B.B. (newcomer Perla Haney-Jardine).
After the sheer movie-mad pop sensibility and stylized violence of "Vol. 1," "Volume 2" is a bit of a let down for several reasons. Yet there is no denying Tarantino's artistry. The Bills will probably end up being the most personal films in the director's oeuvre and it will be interesting to see if a recut of the whole will ever see the light of day. As a standalone film, "Vol. 2" suffers for its less flashy opponents and its final sequence. There is no one as spectacular as Lucy Liu and Chiaki Kuriyama in this episode (although Gordon Liu's Pai Mei is an equal matchup to Sonny Chiba's Hattori Hanzo) and Carradine plays Bill too ambiguously. Tarantino originally wrote the Bill character for Warren Beatty, a tantalizing casting choice that will forever provoke reimaginings of the film. And considering the superhuman swath of violence that leads up to Beatrix's confrontation with Bill, when it finally arrives the characters simply seem to relax too much, forming a familial bond of lethal equals. Beatrix's explanation for leaving Bill includes a too-jokey flashback involving a pregnancy test and Bill's reflection on his daughter presents a fledgling assassin! If one sits through the final credits, there's a hint that mother and daughter may be back, perhaps to face Elle, the only viper left alive.
"Kill Bill Vol. 2" does have more of that delicious Tarantinoesque dialogue ('I never saw anyone buffalo Bill the way she buffaloed Bill') and cinematographer Robert Richardson ("Kill Bill, Vol. 1") and editor Sally Menke should be remembered at year's end for the slight of hand that lets the film slip from one genre style to the next while always seeming of a whole piece. Once again RZA (with additional music by Quentin's filmmaking buddy Robert Rodriguez) mines musical vaults for a dizzying array of musical accompaniment. Uma Thurman can claim a legendary film character, which she has acquitted with considerable panache all the while displaying incredible fortitude. The other acting pleasures in "Vol. 2" are found in the smaller supporting roles. Gordon Liu is hilarious as the egotistical and insulting martial arts master and if there is any justice, Michael Parks ("Kill Bill Vol. 1's" Sheriff, "From Dusk Til Dawn") should receive a Tarantino career revival for his snakelike Estaban, a Mexican brothel owner. Parks delivers his lines like he can barely stay awake, giving his conversational partner a false sense of security before he quietly strikes.
Tarantino credits 'story by' to 'Q&U,' which appears on screen like a lovers' initials carved into a tree. After "Pulp Fiction" and now "Kill Bill," Tarantino is wearing his heart for Thurman on his sleeve and we are the beneficiaries.
B+
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