They must have used up all the fake blood in Volume 1.

Rating: 10/10 (28 April 2004)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** When you have a movie as hugely popular as Kill Bill Vol. 1, it is to be expected that it's sequel, or in this case it's other half, generates a huge amount of expectation and attention, especially when it also involves a director as hugely (and deservedly) popular as Quentin Tarantino. Combine this with the depth of Tarantino's films and the amount of subject matter that he wisely leaves up to individual interpretation, and you have a virtual blank canvas upon which just about anyone can insert almost any meaning that they want the movie to have. This makes for some pretty interesting film criticism read, on the IMDb and elsewhere, but the reason I bring this up is because I just read an article in the April 26, 2004 issue of Time magazine in which Richard Corliss claims that Kill Bill II has `enough blood to appease the Passion of the Christ crowd.' Is it just me or is this a display of a massive misunderstanding of the Passion of the Christ and it's intended audience?
Anyway, back what is arguably the less violent of the two movies under discussion. Kill Bill II is not a sequel and it's not a prequel, but while it is simply the other half one the same story, it has elements of both sequel and prequel. It's part II but it also tells about the story before part I began but it also picks up directly in the middle of a story, in the middle of which Part I also ended. We learn about what exactly was going on at the fateful `wedding party' where the first film began, we learn about the past of The Bride, why Bill tried to kill her, why she was getting married, and why she is so heavily trained in martial arts (hint: it's not just because she's starring in a movie directed by a life-long lover of kung-fu movies).
(spoilers) There is a memorable scene where The Bride, whose real name turns out to be Beatrix, is enduring some of her early training from an old kung-fu wizard who, when he stands up and fights, reveals that he is not as old as he looks from far away, but rather about as old as he looks close-up. No that the make-up was bad. In fact, that endless beard managed to earn itself a spot as one of the best sources of comic relief in this movie which, being a Tarantino film, is literally brimming with comic relief.
Like Part I, however, Tarantino is very aware of which scenes should have a comedic edge, and which scenes would destroy the movie if they were made amusing. The scene where Beatrix is buried alive, for example, is like the scene in Part I where she realizes that she is no longer pregnant. Neither should be funny, and neither are. In this case, it comes dangerously close, as Budd (one of Beatrix's targets) and one of his Texas hillbilly friends are looking down at the restrained Bride, and said hillbilly, in his miniscule amount of screen time, presents himself as a staggeringly backwards and idiotic inbred moron, such a clod of a man that you almost have to laugh in pity. There really are people like that in the world, it's tragic.
Volume II has been called a character study, and I have to agree. The movie is essentially, and importantly, about the vague and blank spots in Volume I. Specifically, the other characters in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. While it's true that much of the suspense is killed by the little factoid that it's not hard to guess that these former partners of Beatrix are going to meet an unpleasant end at some point in the movie, the ultimate face-off with Bill could not have been less expected. At least one of the characters, Michael Madsen's Budd, believes that Beatrix deserves her revenge, but none of them, himself included, are planning on allowing her to achieve what she deserves.
I was initially pretty surprised at how talky Volume II is, mostly because I expected it to be even more violent given the fact that is necessarily includes the climax of the overall story. On the other hand, after a movie like Kill Bill Vol. 1, Quentin really had a lot of explaining to do. The dialogue in the movie is unnervingly thoughtful, much of it, especially in the scene with Bill, even psychological, which is another of Tarantino's signature film tricks. He can make brutally violent characters speak like philosophers and you don't even really realize it until you write a movie review about it later and think to yourself, Hey, who talks like that in real life? Or maybe that's just me. My favorite example is most of the dialogue between Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction.
The females in Kill Bill are famously much deadlier than the men (Budd, for example, has graduated in life to a dingy trailer in the middle of the Texas desert and earned himself the highly skilled job as a bouncer at a topless bar), which is good, because our hero is a woman and what would be the fun of her just running around and exacting her revenge on a lot of men? Compare Daryl Hannah's Elle Driver to Madsen's Budd (and the way she calmly killed him) and you'll know what I mean.
Speaking of which, here's an interesting scene. Elle Driver comes to Budd's house because he's called her to inform her that he has buried alive their highest value target, and he wants to sell her priceless Hattori Hanso sword to Elle for a measly million bucks. Elle shows up, gives Budd the money as he stumbles around the trailer in true redneck form, spilling his drink everywhere (doesn't matter, he's rich now, he won't be living there much longer anyway), and as he sits down and starts greedily pulling out wads of $100 bills, he uncovers a black mamba snake, for which Beatrix was code named.
I assume Elle used a black mamba both for symbolism reasons, as well as to punish him appropriately for burying Beatrix alive before she was able to have her way with her first. At any rate it provides an excellent opportunity for Elle to provide the toxicological contents of the black mamba's venom as it seeps into Budd's bloodstream from all of the bite wounds to his face. Animal Planet was never this muc fun! What makes no sense about the scene is that after the snake delivers a series of fatal bites to Budd's face, it disappears and Elle walks calmly around the trailer, even stooping to the floor to gather the pile of now-loose $100 bills back into the suitcase, never once worried that the snake might still be around to deliver another fatal dose a venom. I doubt if black mamba snakes take sides in such a conflict as these people are engaged in. And besides that, how did she get it in there in the first place?
Sure, there are some holes here, but I like to think that despite such inconsistencies and loose points like these, the movie doesn't even falter. Indeed, it is surely a testament to both the popularity and skill of Quentin Tarantino that he is able to so smoothly get away with a scene like this, where literally the only thing that makes sense is that the snake would be in a biting mood after being stuffed in a suitcase packed with wads of $100 bills.
I've read articles here and there about Quentin talking about putting together a Kill Bill Vol. III sometime in the distant future (after part 1 I had a theory that Vernita Green's daughter would come back in Vol. II to get her revenge against her mother's killer the way O-Ren Ishii did for her parents' killer, but then I realized that she would still be a little girl in Vol. II), as well as an animated prequel in the same style as the animated sequence in Vol.I. Tarantino is, however famous for leaving projects on the back burner for years and years, if not indefinitely, so while a Vol. III would not be released for years anyway, there may be little use in holding your breath waiting for more of the Bill saga to come from the Tarantino camp. I can't believe I just said that. I hate it when people talk about this camp or that camp.
Anyway, Kill Bill as a whole is an intricate and self-sustained movie that is not in need of any other movies to supplement it, but it is also clever in that it leaves tons of room for at least one more or two more movies. And given the popularity and quality of the two parts so far, I don't imagine there would be a lot of complaints about more.