Should Have Been One Movie

Rating: 8/10 (14 August 2019)

I just watched Kill Bill Vol 2
There are too many scenes in this film that damage the pacing. It feels very bloated at times. Rather than flowing smoothly, it lurches from point-to-point, giving screen time to secondary characters who are neither colorful enough nor intriguing enough to warrant it. This is the case of a director having fallen too much in love with his material. The result is that much of Volume 2, for all of its strengths, is self-indulgent. About 50% of the movie is used to provide backstory.
That's the bad news. The good news is that, despite its flaws, it's still a good movie. There's much less action, a lot more talking (Although much of the dialogue isn't vintage Tarantino, except a scene like Bill's "Superman" monologue), and a legitimate effort to build the characters.
Put the two parts together, and Tarantino has made a masterful saga that celebrates the martial arts genre while kidding it, loving it, and transcending it.
Tonally, the two films are different, which may be the result of the split. Hopefully, Tarantino's original, single-movie cut of Kill Bill will eventually be available on DVD. With the two parts re-knitted and much of the extraneous material removed, this could be a great motion picture, right up there with Pulp Fiction. As it currently stands, Kill Bill is a victim of its director's ego and its distributor's greed. The moments of greatness make it worth seeing, and there's certainly plenty of entertainment to be found here, but it's hard not to lament what might have been
Kill Bill Volume 2 grossed $66 million dollars (against a $40 million dollar budget) at the domestic box office.