An OK film but overlong and lacking it's own voice (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (2 May 2004)

After the murder of O-Ren Ishii and her squad of bodyguards, the Bride continues her quest to kill Bill in revenge for shooting her and leaving her and her unborn child for dead. Bill warns his deadbeat brother, Budd, of her return and he prepares the best he can. When her attack on Budd goes wrong, she finds herself buried alive in a graveyard - left to rot and suffer until her last breath. As she lies trapped she remembers her training from Master Pai Mei and tries to focus on her ultimate goal.
Just to set it in context, let me say that I thought Volume I was an OK film but pretty much just soulless style with no substance. Volume II is a different film but it was still only OK, having the same sort of problem and some of it's own. I say this from the start because far too many reviewers here seem to see Tarantino films as a sort of sacred grail that can only be loved or hated. This is, of course, nonsense and such glowing fan-boy praise has put me off reading many people's reviews. This film is very different from the first volume and many will be let down by the lack of bloody action - but, I'm sorry, if that's all you want from a film then you should go and just rent any of your bottom shelf actioners from your video store. Here we have far more dialogue and longer, slower scenes that require patience. However this is not to say that the film has more of the substance that I missed from the first film - and reviewers who say that this film provides the heart and substance to volume I's guts are just wrong - substance is not snappy dialogue.
Substance is character and story. Here we are given a bit more plot in the form of back story but the film is still very much based on a revenge story that other directors with much smaller budgets would have had the good taste to deliver in under half the four hour running time of this film. However it still fails to really give us characters that we can care about enough to get emotionally into the film. Some of them are interesting - Budd in particular has a certain world weary acceptance of things on one hand, but then contradicts this characteristic about two scenes later. The ending of the film is particularly weak because of this total lack of emotional involvement - the sudden requirement that we care about the Bride's situation is too much and just comes across as cutesy nonsense, likewise the actual manner of Bill's death will disappoint both those seeking emotion and action. Action fans will wonder why Tarantino ignores the rules of the genre he is aping and makes the death low-key; but it would have been a great ending if we had had better characters - if Bill had been someone we had gotten to know it would have worked much better. The ending is, fitting with the spaghetti western homage, very much like Fonda's in Once Upon A Time In The West, but his was impacting for the same reasons that Bill's in not.
Speaking of homage's, there are so many here that it becomes a film that will probably be enjoyed by those with a good working knowledge of cinema. The film opens with The Postman Always Rings Twice and continues with references and nods to John Ford, Sergio Leone, Carrie and others. While these styles are all copied well I did start to wonder if Tarantino had his own voice - there was barely a scene that was `his', even his comic book dialogue has become a sort of cliché onto itself. As a fan of spaghetti westerns, I enjoyed much of the film as I don't find it slow or dull when it is done in this context, to me the long looks and slow talk is part of that genre and I generally like it. I enjoyed this element as I have never seen a spaghetti western on the big screen and enjoyed seeing this; also I enjoyed the copies of John Ford's work - at least Tarantino has used his break from directing to watch some movies that come from before his own lifetime. The whole Pai Mei segment is amusing but hardly original - hell, even the Police Academy movies have copied this exaggerated style, so it being done by Tarantino is not that impressive. It is true that all his movies have had references to other movies and his direction has aped different genres but he has never done it to the point that he has here - here he loses his own voice and if I had only seen this film I would think that Tarantino is only able to copy what he has seen rather than use it in his own way.
The lack of characters is helped by the improvement of dialogue - here we actually have people speaking rather than just people killing each other in a soulless manner. The dialogue is well written and makes the people more than just sword fodder, even if they aren't ever real people we care about. As writer Tarantino is able, even if this is far from his best work and it did feel at times like he was just doing what people expected of him. However he should really have cut back on his film's running time. As a stand alone, this film is too long for it's flimsy foundation to support - it's not horribly overlong but it could have lost 20 minutes and benefited from it. Certainly, as `one' film, four hours plus is an absurdly long running time for this material.
The acting is a bit better here than in the first film but Thurman is as bland and wooden as she was in the first film. Her sudden mother's instincts at the end are all the more laughable for her complete lack of human emotion up till this point. It is Carradine who makes this film though, and his performance is not so important as his presence, which is impressive. He doesn't always convince saying the lines put in his mouth (the superman monologue in particular) but he is a good presence in the film. Madsen is good despite giving the same performance that he does in every film he does. Hannah is cool and is a good baddie, standing out from the majority of them - her vampy performance suits the film's style. Liu is great fun and seems to enjoy spoofing the genre he is best known for (well, homaging rather than spoofing maybe). Generally the performances are as good as the material deserves, they are not good enough to make the characters real or involving, but that is as much the material's fault as theirs.
Overall this is an OK film. It is not a great film and it is not a rubbish film. Tarantino films are just films, they are not the word of god and they will have good points and bad points, the hope is that the good will outweigh the bad and, generally this manages to hit that balance. The mix of genres makes it interesting but Tarantino shows that the maturity he showed in Jackie Brown was only a blip or a fluke. Instead he shows his immaturity by aping the work of others so much that he loses his own voice - on top of this his indiscipline makes both films (separately and together) overlong and he really needs to find an editing partner who can help him in the same way as Martin Scorsese generally has.