Kill Bill, Volume 2 (2004)

Far Superior to Vol. 1

Tarentino's masterpiece is complete. Kill Bill Vol. 1 had all the style a three and a half hour film could possibly need crammed into one 90 minute session. Volume 2 is everything it needed to be and more. It has enough plot, dialogue and heart to flesh out what is essentially one incredibly piece of work.

For anyone who needs reminding I'll skip through the plot. A former assassin only know as The Bride (Uma Thurman) is on a quest to gain revenge on her former colleagues known as the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS) for gate crashing her wedding and killing everyone who was present before thier employer Bill (David Carradine) put a bullet in her head.

After somehow surviving and spending four years in a coma, The Bride awakens and swiftly proceeds to kill two DiVAS. Now with three names left on her death list, the roaring rampage of revenge continues.

The film opens at the church where the massacre occurred and a lengthy conversation between The Bride and Bill. This is the first sign that you're watching a very different film than you might have expected. Not just a gory bloodfest, this feels more like a Tarentino movie. There's a lot more dialogue but unlike films such as Pulp Fiction there is no idol chit-chat about what McDonalds in Europe call their hamburgers. Here the discussion pushes the plot along developing the characters and filling in some of the blanks.

QT is famous for resurrecting the career of faded stars and Carradine may be his greatest find. Bill's face never appeared on camera in Vol. 1 but his haunting voice built an air of mystique around him. From his first proper on screen appearance Carradine breathes live into his character in a magnificent performance.

One of the things I found interesting about the first volume was how the members of the DiVAS have ended up four years later. O-ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) rose to the top of the Japanese crime world, whereas Vernita Green (Vivica A Fox) became a normal housewife. Now we are introduced properly to the remaining members. Budd (Michael Madsen) works as a bouncer is a cheap club in Texas and lives in a trailer. Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) is more of a mystery. She drives an expensive car and has easy access to a million dollars but her present is never explained. Perhaps she still works for Bill?

Kill Bill Vol. 2 is so much more than the almost farcical, but terrifically entertaining bloodbath the original was. It's time to consider both films as one complete work and as a single 3 hour long piece, it's a flawless work of genius.

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