Kill Bill Volume 2
When Quentin Tarantino came out with Volume 1 in this particular saga, many thought that he had abandoned the high level of maturity in his writing for something possibly far more entertaining: A high octane anime cartoon come to life, overflowing with blood, guts, and the body parts of various bad guys, using but a shoestring of a revenge plot to send Uma Thurmanâs Bride into mortal combat against a virtual army of dreaded bad guys, but for all its stylistic, visceral thrills, the character development for Thurmanâs character was just about nil, and the true personality (and face) of David Carradineâs main villain Bill was still little more than just an intriguing enigma. Of course, Tarantino always intended the whole thing to be a 4+ hour single epic movie, and without knowing currently what difference he would have made with the artistic and editing choices therein, we must thus sit back and enjoy Volume 2 as it is, and now we can finally see both the expert writing and character development that Tarantino is known for utilized to its fullest extent, starting with the very smart decision to finally humanize Thurmanâs Bride, showing a full flashback right off the bat of the moments leading up to her wedding massacre (really just the rehearsal) when sheâs shocked to discover that Bill has literally turned up at the front door of the chapel, playing his flute and promising not to disrupt the ceremony as he watches on before the other members of his elite team of assassins show up loaded for bear to use their firepower to literally destroy these âregularâ people involved in the wedding, not really because Thurman had the audacity to walk away from this group to be a âregularâ person herself, but rather as we learn all the way up to the end, that not only was she considered the âbest and the brightestâ in this whole lot of professional killers, it seems that her and Bill were indeed IN LOVE with each other, and that their âbreakupâ so to speak had resulted in a loverâs quarrel that had wound up costing many, many people their lives, mostly because Thurman (pregnant with Billâs baby) had decided that she wanted their child to pretty much lead a normal life, and that the goofy, young used record store owner whom she was marrying (and her very basic group of girlfriends) had represented just that, a departure from the life of a trained, cold blooded killer, and Bill just couldnât have that. Now with Vivica Foxâs Vernita Green and Lucy Liuâs O-Ren Ishii having been dispatched in Volume 1, that leaves along with Bill, his brother Budd (Michael Madsen), now reduced to using his badass skills working as a bouncer in a low rent strip club working for a lowlife cokehead boss who orders him around all while living in a dingy trailer out in the middle of nowhere, having had a falling out with Bill (possibly over the whole Thurman affair) and not really caring or worrying too much about it if Thurman comes calling for him. Then thereâs the eyepatch wearing Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah being rough and sexy), a mean, hateful person to say the least, but also one who surprisingly harbors a profound respect for Thurman or at least just enough to make her want to be able to say that it was she who took down Billâs most golden prodigy. As their drama plays out over the first 2/3rds of the story, we are treated to another major flashback where Bill sets Thurman up to be the student in the art of kung fu at the cruel hands of a master played by Gordon Liu, which is done mostly to set up plot points later on where she uses certain techniques from her training there to her advantage. From there itâs on to visit a particularly sleazy Mexican pimp (Michael Parks) who happens to be the closest thing that Bill has to a father and then itâs the final showdown with The Man himself, complicated in many ways by the fact that her once thought dead baby is now being raised by her biological father. It is throughout the movie that certain themes come out that make all of this much more interesting than your standard B movie fare, including one (hinted at in the first movie) that when you have a motivation for revenge as pure as Thurmanâs is against such wicked and evil people, that by eliminating them you are actually in essence doing Godâs work, carrying out His vengeance with the skills that you have to strike them down while at the same time absolving yourself of your own sins to in the end reunite yourself with your child. Then there is the idea (evident early on with Madsenâs character and surprisingly as well with Bill himself) that one knows that their actions in the church that day acting out their sense of revenge on one person by killing a roomful of decent, innocent people (really not a common thing as opposed to their prepaid targets who deserve it one way or another) was most definitely the most single, purely EVIL act that they had ever committed, a place where they had all crossed the line into a dark realm from which they would never return nor ever find redemption for, and perhaps the most startling thing about Billâs general attitude late in the film is not only the sense of acceptance he seems to have over Thurman coming for him, but also in the way he almost seems to be at PEACE with it, even as Tarantino manages to tease the outside possibility of a reconciliation between the two when we finally see the father, the mother, and the daughter together as a family unit and with the little girl still alive having survived the massacre and being born, it almost negates entirely Thurmanâs entire motivation for revenge, while the ones killed in the church could just be chalked up as mere collateral damage over Billâs jealous tendencies. But that still doesnât change the fact that despite Billâs wealth and slew of connections, Thurman does NOT want him to have any kind of role in the raising of her child, so the initial premise of her finishing the job that she was there for doesnât change one bit, even after the three of them get their precious little time together to spend it as a family. As for the performances, Thurman finally gets to show her acting skills and not just seem like a cold blooded, revenge minded killing machine like she was in the first movie, but it is Carradine who really excels in what was perhaps the finest performance in his very long and storied career. When the role of Bill was originally offered to Warren Beatty, Tarantino envisioned him as a suave, James Bond secret agent type determined to have his own personal army of females ready to kill at his command. When Beatty turned him down and even suggested Carradine for the part, Tarantino not only did a massive overhaul and rewrite on the script, but he luckily was also able to utilize the actorâs well known fondness for martial arts and far Eastern philosophy to incorporate it into the character, since Carradine was truly one of the most fascinating anti establishment actors to ever live, a man whose own extensive study and research of the Eastern culture enabled him in real life to have many connections throughout the Asian world (and maybe some unsavory ones as well which some believe may have led to his bizarre, mysterious death a few years later), something that we come to feel is true with the Bill character as well, albeit in a more sinister sense. Moreso is the fact that he was such a polarizing, outsider figure in Hollywood that while he picked up a slew of wins and nominations on the regional circuit in the Supporting Actor category (including a Golden Globe nom), he still failed to score the Oscar nomination that had always eluded him. As such, while the film retains some pacing issues (such as when Thurman gets buried alive), this still moves ahead of Volume 1 on the Tarantino charts for having writing that is both insightful and revealing along with enough action to keep those who preferred seeing a bunch of Yakuza in Lone Ranger masks getting cut down happy, with Carradineâs Superman monologue being one of the best pieces of dialogue that Tarantino has ever written, a not all that far off the mark analysis of what The Man Of Steelâs true motives really are. And as if knowing that this second volume would turn Thurman into a more realistic human being, it is here that we finally learn her characterâs nameâŚBeatrix Kiddo, the memorable female lead to one of the wildest and most original action extravaganzas in the history of cinemaâŚ
9/10