More Soul But Not A Stand-Alone Movie

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2004)

This should have been a single movie rather than two truncated mini-movies. It seems Q agrees because he places the credits with all of the actors at the end (including mini-clips from part I), and we realize how very, very many things aren't in this second part.
It's a shame, because Kill Bill 2 is more thoughtful and fleshes out the plot, with backstories on The Bride and Bill and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) characters, as well as meaningful dialogue explaining the bloodbath of the first movie. But it needed an editor to chop down the words. Just as the first movie needed an editor to chop down the fight sequences. THE MATRIX 2 and 3 taught us that more Agent Smiths and bigger, louder, longer fight sequences don't improve things. But if Kill Bill vol. 1 suffers from Matrix 2/3 excesses, Volume 2 suffers from an excess of verbiage and overdone dialogue along the lines of...I dunno, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE? There is too much self-indulgence at work here, and I fear the box office of these two movies is just going to make "Q"'s next effort that much more baggy and undisciplined.
Q has said splitting the movie in two allowed him to keep all the little bits he otherwise would have had to cut, but the truth is, there's a good half hour from part one that should have excised and a good twenty minutes more from part two. The result would have been a roughly three hour standalone movie that would have been tight and eminently watchable in one sitting. Kind of like the Beatles White Album, which would have been their all-time best had it been a single epic-length platter, but because they decided to indulge themselves and throw everything they came up with on the two discs, it's full of classics and crap side by side.
Even Kill Bill's music screams of lengthy epics, with Ennio Morricone sprinkled throughout the trailer sequence evoking THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY's monumental breadth. It would have worked as homage and humor in a single movie, but feels out of place and strangely wrong in this split up movie thanks to Miramax's quest for the dollars. To Q's credit, though, the overall music is wonderfully reminiscent of the seventies and chopsocky movies; I suspect he spent a long time putting it together and it is generally effective.
Kill Bill Vol. 2 is okay, but is lessened by being separated from Vol. 1. This is the rare movie where the "Director's Cut" DVD should have LESS footage and Q + U and HW and M should return KB V I and II into one film, the way it should have been from the start.