Kill Bill: Vol. 2
See also:
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Uncle Cliff)
I am genuinely surprised this film has been as well received as it has (4 or 5 stars all-round). Not because it is a bad film, just because I would have assumed its departure from Volume 1 would have divided critics more. There were those who complained Volume 1 was nothing but an hour and a half of plotless violence with little or no insights into the main character whose bloody revenge we were following. Then, there were those who loved it for that exact reason.
That the second film is so different from the first, I was sure would give the haters more fuel for their fire, and upset the action-junkies that probably saw the first film 20-odd times (for proof of such a crowd: in my session on opening day there was a bunch of twenty-year-old guys who had all obviously taken the day off work for this event and had smuggled in a heap of beers – and this was a morning session).
More than anything QT has ever done before, Volume 2 is tentatively walking that fence between his brilliance and tendency for self-absorption. There are a couple of long, long scenes that serve no purpose at all but seem to have only escaped the chop because a) Tarantino was too in love with his own dialogue to part with it and/or b) he had cast yet another retro actor whose work he obviously adored and thus probably wrote the specific part/scene for. But believe me when I say they serve no purpose at all and only distract.
However there is something sublime about the way a lot of Volume 2's other actionless scenes are played out. The only thing in Volume 1 to compare it to would be the two-assassin's-sharing-a-coffee-in-the-middle-of-trying-to-kill-each-other scene. Lots of pathos and bountiful tension. You know hell will break loose at any moment but it is the disturbing calm before the storm and the casualness of their conversations in such circumstances that gives these characters so much of their definition, and it is their adherence to some kind of unspoken cowboy/samurai code that makes these cold-blooded killers all the more curious.
That being said, this trick is responsible for making the film end in a whimper instead of a bang and instead of a showdown we get a 30 minute chat between the two former-lovers-turned-enemies. Purposefully, I'm sure, but after the House of Blue Leaves climax in Volume 1, and the obvious build-up to the actual killing of Bill, I expected a bit more. But maybe that's just the fourteen-year-old in me that was responsible for those Van Damme and Steven Seagal films that reside in my film-memory database. And maybe QT knew he couldn't out-do the Crazy 88 fight from Volume 1 so didn't bother and went for the drama instead.
Not to say Volume 2 doesn't have its share of fantastic violence. The Elle Driver (one-eyed Darryl Hannah) scene is particularly wince-worthy, and makes up for the anti-climax of Budd (once again, purposefully, and perhaps a bit refreshing considering everyone would have been expecting another drawn-out fight, but ultimately not too interesting and a bit of a waste of Madsen's character). However the best stuff comes half an hour into the film.
The Bride is buried alive under ground, and we experience it all, from the pitch black darkness to the sound of dirt being poured on her coffin, better than any scene like this before it. I doubt this will work well on DVD, but in the cinema the claustrophobic experience is inescapable. When critics of Volume 2 are saying Tarantino is brilliant, this is what they are talking about, or should be. This scene leads to a flashback to the Bride being trained by a Chinese martial arts guru which for all its corn (think 70's kung-fu complete with dodgy zooms) is still some of the best stuff in the film.
I left the cinema from Kill Bill: Volume 1 exhilarated, not just because it was after of one of the finest, longest, well-crafted action scenes I have ever seen, but because it represented a return to a kind of ‘pure-cinema', where yes, the spectacle was the most important part. The music and the visuals induced sensory stimulation that ‘event' movies of today, with their sole focus on the latest in computer-generated-images, just don't have a clue about. I read somewhere someone's opinion that I liked where they said that Tarantino is the only example of a modern film-maker that can make both an excellent ‘film' and a ‘movie' with the same piece of cinema. Tarantino's melting-pot of action cinema reminded me that cinema can be wonderfully self-referencing without choking on itself.
Volume 2 is a dialogue-ridden film that lacks a lot of the punch of Tarantino's usual banter. You won't go home remembering any quotes from this one and I'd be very surprised if the soundtrack includes any excepts of the film's monologues, as is the norm with his movies. There is utter brilliance in there, and trimming off half-an-hour would really bring that out more.
I wasn't disappointed in this one, just surprised. Pleasantly surprised in some cases where the scenes are played out so wonderfully and without any pizzazz, such a contrast to the first film. Of course, in other cases I was rolling my eyes at how indulgent he is in this film, which he usually of course is, it is just that in this case it threatens to derail the film.