Kill Bill: Vol. 2

It's a hefty price to pay, preparing for your wedding day, as your jilted lover Bill, arrives in time to maim and kill, left unconscious, comatose, muscles wasting, decompose, four years later you awaken, and you feel a little shaken, so you start to wiggle toes, then start looking for your foes, there are several scores to settle, you know how to use sharp metal.

The Bride continues to track down her past acquaintances and leaves them under no illusion how cold her revenge can be when it comes to finding the whereabouts of the titular Bill. In the style of several classic film genres from several countries, if the pursuit of ultra-violent and vicious vendetta with serious loss of blood and body parts is your thing, then you've come to the right place. Also contains great dialogue.

It's a matter of some debate which volume of Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" is better. Let's end the argument right now: David Carradine doesn't even appear in "Volume 1." Hasn't the Academy mailed him his Best Supporting Actor Oscar already?

In the first volume of "Kill Bill," released only a few months before "Vol. 2" in the tail end of 2003, we met Uma Thurman, one peeded-off super-assassin taking out some folks from her past one at a time, with the occasional mega-posse thrown in for interest. "Vol. 1" had a lot of blood, violence, and wisecracks, and galloped across the screen like a rap video on steroids.

"Vol. 2" is way different. It makes sense it's a separate movie; the tone is such a departure from "Vol. 1" in two ways. One is style. Director Tarantino has fun stylistically quoting Sergio Leone and chop-fu cheapos from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cinematic sampling is something he's good at and enjoys, but in "Vol. 2" he doesn't go as overboard as he does in "Vol. 1." He pulls back and lets the plot breathe, rather than filling every spare second with a homage-cum-parody that maybe a dozen lucky fans will get. Maybe some here wish he'd pile it on a bit more, but they have to make do with the goofy Pei Mai sequence, which is a flashback and hence not jarring in its "Vol. 1"-style comic-book treatment. Throughout "Vol. 2" the emphasis is on storytelling and character-building, which is where it should be given we are now being asked to deepen our commitment of interest to these people. "Vol. 1" is okay for what it is, but its flash and action are no match for the depth and nuance of "Vol. 2."

This gets to the second different tonal difference between the films, which is emotional. It all comes back to the characters. They don't quite become real people here, but they get close enough to get under your skin. Admittedly, the opening part of "Vol. 2" tests the viewer's patience a bit, there's some long bits that show the director hasn't really mastered self-discipline, like with Thurman's graveyard struggle, but the meandering usually has a purpose. Tarantino is building toward something here that has its payoff when Thurman's character finally has her face-to-face showdown with Carradine's Bill.

From that moment forward to the end, this is the best Tarantino has ever been.

Carradine and Thurman dominate the proceedings with two of the finest performances I've seen, certainly the best Tarantino has directed, playing off the mythology we've been taught in "Vol. 1" and developing resonances with the viewer both together and apart which will surprise those expecting a casual butt-kicking affair. We finally find out what Carradine means in the first line of "Vol. 1" where he tells a whimpering victim he is being masochistic, not sadistic, and its a powerful revelation, that this sinister baddie may have a heart buried under that cold exterior. Carradine is perfect in his phrasing, his pauses, the tired glint in his eye, or the way he says "Kiddo." You can't ask for a better veteran performance. For her part, Thurman presents a brilliantly conflicted character who can not stop either hating or loving Bill, and brings us not into a world of cartoon anguish, but real human pain.

"Kill Bill Vol. 2" is slow-moving, and needs "Vol. 1" in a way few sequels do, since it assumes you know nearly all the characters coming in. That's a weakness. So are some undeniably pointless bits, including the entire sequence with Bill's father figure, Esteban Vihaio, and some business at a bar involving Michael Madsen, who plays a former assassin now gone to seed.

Madsen's good, though, and so's Daryl Hannah as another rather mouthy assassin, Gordon Liu as Pei Mei, and especially Perla Haney-Jardine as a girl named B.B. The nice thing with Tarantino is for every scene that strikes a bum note, there's four or five that hit the right mark, and some manage to do much more. My favorite scene involves a Mexican standoff in an L.A. hotel room between Thurman's character and an anonymous hitwoman, at once grippingly suspenseful, hilarious, and life-affirming. Still, it's the final moments of this film that will stay with you, as Bill and his former pupil work out their "unfinished business" and we are left to ponder the results of their decisions and actions.

"Kill Bill Vol. 2" may not reach the heights of cinema to which it aspires, the level of "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly" quoted in its score, but it's a fine film that will make most viewers glad they stuck around for the second installment. I am.

In my brief, initial review of 'Kill Bill Vol. 1.' I made the regrettable mistake of dismissing it as exceedingly pleasing yet unsubstantial stylistic masturbation, lacking the profundity and characterizations of Tarantino's previous works. Rarely have I been happier to be proven wrong.

What once seemed like somewhat incoherent cinematic recklessness has, after viewing the second part of Mr. Tarantino's saga, revealed itself to be wild, imaginative and brilliant filmmaking. As a whole, 'Kill Bill' is utterly unified (not despite but because of the radical shift in tone), possesses a strong, dramatic ark, and, above all, stands as quite possibly the most passionate, loving tribute to cinema I have ever seen. While part one pays homage to Brian De Palma, Dario Argento and the Shaw Brothers, part two cites, among many others, Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, and Robert Siodmark.

But that's far from all.

In his critical essay 'The Cinema of the Cool', Kevin Murphy suggests that Tarantino must move on and grow up to fully realize his potential as a filmmaker. In my opinion, with this piece, he has done so. Those merely seeking the blood-splattered, broken-bone action of Vol. 1 will be severely disappointed by Vol. 2, which is infinitely more thoughtful, pondering the nature of violence, both in cause and effect. While the action in the first installment was great, comic book fun, here it becomes severely unpleasant, cringe inducing, and never without consequence. If anything, it reminded me of the great Akira Kurosawa's work. Remarkable.

The second half to Tarantino's Kill Bill movie, Volume 2 gives us an adequate ending to The Bride's quest for vengeance. I'm not blown away by Vol. 2 and it feels like a weaker version of the first Volume. Gone is the caliber of character and flair that blessed the first volume. Gone is the sense of mystery carefully cultivated in the first volume, replaced by backstory that's wholly acceptable but ultimately uninspired. The dialogue is fine as well, it's Tarantino dialogue, but still not as good as the first volume. Soundtrack is fine, but definitely not as iconic as the soundtrack of Vol. 1.

Volume 2 doesn't take itself seriously, a continuation of the same signature demeanor of the first Volume, but while Vol. 1 pulled it off in an irreverent manner, Vol. 2 comes across as goofy and slightly overdone, and not goofy in a positive way.

It's an OK movie, my critique sounds overly negative but 7/10 really isn't a terrible film. I just don't think this lives up to the preceding volume. I'm sure there's some deep film-lover layers of meaning that flew over my head, I saw another review waxing poetic about how this was the best thing Tarantino's ever done and talked about all the homages to other film inspiration layered into the film that I very much did not pick up on. So if that's your demographic, this might be the movie for you.

When I first heard that this film was going to be split into two movies instead of being presented as one as originally planned, I was angry. I accused the powers that be of trying to squeeze two box office triumphs out of a single project. But after having seen both 'Kill Bill' and 'Kill Bill Vol.2', I am glad because both films are extremely different even though the stories are tied together with primarily the same actors and having the same director. Containing less action than 'Kill Bill', volume 2 is intelligent, bizarre and extremely engrossing. It absorbs all of its elements equally and David Carradine's performance as Bill is the best thing to happen in movie villain history since, well, I'll leave that up to individual interpretation.