"There are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard."
Perhaps truer words were never spoken in any context, but in a Tarantino-derived universe, this is a particularly frightening concept. And as the majority of the movie-going population already knows from "Kill Bill Vol. 1," Tarantino-style revenge is definitely a gory game.
But in "Kill Bill Vol. 2," the excellent follow-up and conclusion to the prior film, the consequences reveal more depth than a bloody pool of dead Japanese henchmen and pack more emotional jabs than an emblazoned Bride with a samurai sword.
This being said, it should be the wish of any viewer that somebody had played Jim to Quentin Tarantino's Huck Finn, and taught him about a little king named Solomon (okay, he could have gone to Sunday school as well, I suppose, but nobody packs on the irony like Twain does). Maybe then Tarantino would have realized that cutting in half things that are otherwise worth keeping (the qualifier being necessary to otherwise justify his characters' propensities for chopping each other to bits), is, in general, a bad idea.
Yes, it is a slight tragedy that "Kill Bill" was hacked into two separate volumes. The most disappointing feature of this major slip in judgment is the fact that what should have been the most surprising element of "Vol. 2" was none-so-subtly alluded to in the end of "Vol. 1" in an Inspector-Gadget-worthy ending voice-over ("I'll get you next time Kiddo! Next time!") as a way to draw back audiences.
But the split down the center is also structurally odd. The overbearing violence of the first would have been easily balanced out by the relative lull that is the first 30 minutes of the second film. The credits of the second film include old-style vignettes of all the characters from both volumes (including a brief original color view of the tonally-muted Crazy 88s scene). And in the first half of the second film, Tarantino continues to beep out the Bride's (Uma Thurman) name even though it is revealed only slightly later on.
But the Bride's name within itself, as well as in the context of its debut, provides a brilliant focal point for any dissertation on the film. When Bill (David Carradine) and Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah) reveal the Bride to be one Beatrix Kiddo, the film jump cuts to a roll-call scene in an elementary school, with a full-grown Uma Thurman at a tiny desk. Extraneous? Well, maybe. Brilliant? Yes, definitely.
This clip only highlights Tarantino's masterful use of the little vignettes, asides, and gags that make "Kill Bill Vol. 2," which would otherwise be both physically and emotionally difficult to swallow, such an amazingly entertaining and captivating film. You might say it has more pop culture references and filmic flip-flop than you can shake a Hattori Hanzo sword at. Combine this with legendary Robert Richardson's fantastic photography direction -- his switching from black and white to color, the use of digital graininess in the scenes with Chinese monk Pai Mei (Gordon Lui) that so heavily juxtaposes the crisp use of light and shadow in the previous coffin scene (which is nothing short of exquisite) and the strange but viable use of a pan-and-scan aspect ratio for close-ups of Beatrix, in contrast to his almost Cinemascope-esque isolation of B.B. (Perla Haney Jardine) in the widescreen -- and the film becomes more visually and amusingly stimulating that any mainstream film to hit theaters in quite a while.
But the name itself, Beatrix Kiddo, reveals even more about the dry wit with which Tarantino infuses all the characters in the film. What could have been deemed as affection when Bill referred to the Bride as "Kiddo" in "Vol. 1" is clearly revealed as mere professionalism.
This wry sense of irony is further played up by all the actors in the film, none of whom fall short of their mark. Darryl Hannah is perfect as she lists off facts about the black mamba that she garnered off the internet as Budd (Michael Madsen) slowly shrivels before her from a bite from the aforementioned snake. David Carradine is best when dryly spitting out silly lines ("all cock-blockery aside " and "you know I'm all about old school") in his low, smooth-as-molasses voice, and he is at his pinnacle as he nonchalantly cuts the crusts off a white bread sandwich with a gigantic butcher's knife.
But you can't beat Uma Thurman. Her rapport with David Carradine, as strange prior lovers of a slightly May-December-relation type, is brilliant, with Bill always acting the wise sage and the otherwise brutal-killer Beatrix in an infatuated and appropriately girlish state. Although perhaps most of the sparks in the film come from the end of gun barrels and the contact of two pieces of Japanese steel, it is undeniable that there is fantastic chemistry, almost a kineticism, between Thurman and Carradine.
This highlights Thurman's emotional range in the film. She's realistically jumpy and feminine in a scene with a 90-second pregnancy test, but she can spit out lines like, "Bitch, you don't have a future" from a dirt and blood smeared face and attack Elle Driver without a change of expression. She can contort her face in so much emotional agony in later confrontations with Bill as to make her sadly painful to watch, but after Bill shoots her with a dart and asks her if she is experiencing a sense of euphoria when she is obviously in pain, she is just as able to deadpan, "Euphoria? No." Perhaps this dichotomy of personality between brutal and vulnerable is best shown in one of the last scenes of the film (skip the rest of this sentence if you don't want anything given away) as she exits Bill's abode, samurai sword over one shoulder, baby girl over the other.
In fact, this is why "Kill Bill Vol. 2" is so brilliant, and works far better than "Vol.1" could ever have hoped to. Whereas "Vol. 1" was a veritable fountain of manga-inspired sword fights and blood-gushing appendages that only skimmed across the top of any emotion or motivation on the part of the characters, "Vol. 2" dives straight to the heart of the problem, and equates the amount of screen time devoted to battle with that devoted to typical Tarantino soliloquies and diatribes. It is perhaps the perfection of this balance, a mix of humor, horror, hyperkinetic action and a little heart-string-tugging, that gives the viewer a full helping of cinematic euphoria?
Yes, definitely.
