KILL BILL: VOLUME TWO

BVI

RELEASED 23 April 2004

Following on immediately from volume one, the intial list of five is now down to three. After successfully killing Oren-Ishii and Vernita Green, the Bride (Uma Thurman) continues in her journey of revenge to kill the remaining three: Budd (Michael Madsen), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), and finally, Bill (David Carradine). But after recently discovering that her daughter B.B. is still alive, the Bride chooses to kill for love, rather than revenge. Complications arise however when the Bride is captured and buried alive, by someone whom she meant to kill first. 

When Quentin Tarantino originally revealed his plans to release ‘Kill Bill’ in two parts, he stated that the running time of the movie went on too long and that a three-hour ‘exploitation’ flick wasn’t really what he had in mind, hence his plan to have two short, sharp movies. So how is it that ‘Volume One’ lasted two hours and ‘Volume Two’ clocks in at ten minutes over that? I make that four hours and ten minutes in total. So that means over an hour has been added to what Tarantino originally came up with. And ‘Volume Two’ definitely suffers from an over-long running time, with action scenes few and far between. ‘Volume One’ felt perfectly paced but ‘Volume Two’ is flabby. Not only is it flabby, it more than once comes over prententious. It gets a little bit serious, and this doesn’t really work when you’ve been laughing only five minutes earlier.

These quibbles aside, the movie does work wonderfully when we’re given an action scene. Tarantino knows how to shoot action and the fighting is brutal. He’s stated he would love to do a gritty Bond film, to which he would bring something special.

Pei Mei (Gordon Liu) is a wonderful addition to ‘Volume Two’, his oriental master being hilarious. He flicks away his ostentatious beard so many times you lose count, but it never stops being funny.

Both Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah give great performances as evil sons-of-bitches, and David Carradine is so impressive it’s a crime that he hasn’t been in the spotlight more over the years. His face is wonderful.

Uma Thurman once again comes out of ‘Kill Bill’ as a bona-fide star. She is in virtually every scene and the camera really does love her.

One last comment concerns a scene which will become infamous. If you get squeamish at anything to do with eyes, there’ll be point when you might want to look away. You’ll know when it is! 

THREE OUT OF FIVE