By the Balls

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2004)

Contains spoilers, but i mean, come on, if you've seen the trailer, you already know what im talking about. No great surprises are ruined.
Before i went to see Kill Bill: Volume 2, i would joke to my friends that i don't go to church, i go see Kill Bill in theaters, so when the second half of the movie came out, i felt compelled to see it as soon as possible. It is my own version of a religious committment. In order to put my own opinions on the second film in perspective, i need to explain what i thought of the first one, however.
I am slightly biased, as Kill Bill: Volume One is one of my favorite types of movies. It is a heroic epic of a sole character who needs to beat insurmountable odds to accomplish a relatively small task, and is only able to do this because of an inhuman amount of passion. It is also a movie that is made not by the plot, the characters, the style, or anything really, except for these moments of intense power where you are completely awestruck by the force and power of the situations given to you. I will not go into great detail on the movie itself, as if you are reading this you probably already know a lot about it.
For a long while Kill Bill 1 was one of my favorite movies.
And at first, second, third, and in fact all superficial glances, Kill Bill Volume 2 is a COMPLETELY different movie. Gone are the Crazy 88 battle scenes, with warriors flying Yue Wu Peung style, gone is the barebone archetypical plotline, gone is the magic realist feel of a world gone backwards, and gone is the splaying blood infused gore.
And what are we given instead? Near the beginning of the film, The Bride is buried alive, which is strangely the same predicament that those who see the film are put into. I am sure that Quentin has enough storyline on each of the 6 main assassins in this movie to make an entire series of movies at least as long as this one, and it is only in this movie that the sheer weight of all the deep, intertwining background history of this world falls on our heads. Whereas Bill was seen merely as the enemy in the first one, in this movie he is The Bride's greatest foe, yet also her greatest freind, greatest lover, and ultimate father figure to the end. All the main characters, in fact, are deeply and perosnally connected in a way that niether Vernita Green nor O-Ren Ishii seemed to be.

The amount of dialouge in this movie is almost unbelievable. Almost. The amount of action scenes is relatively non-existent compared to the first one. But the ones that are there are completely pervasive. The fact that they are diminished in number only increases their quality.
This movie is, in fact, completely similar to Volume One. It is, like the first one, a movie that depends entirely upon the instrumental, shockingly impactful singular moment. I will not ruin any of these for you. You will know them when you see them.
The best way i can describe this movie in one sentence is a realization that i had midway through: "This movie has me by the balls." No other movie has ever done that to me before.