"You and I Have Unfinished Business."

Rating: 10/10 (13 February 2005)

I let this movie soak into my conscience for a day or so before I began to break it down. At first, I was a tad disappointed in this follow up to 2003's Kill Bill, Vol. 1, not a prequel to this sequel, rather the first half of the story. It turned out rather that Volume 1 was the appetizer to the main course that is Volume 2. If you recall, Volume 1 finds Uma Thurman's annoyingly unnamed Bride waking from a coma after her former boss and love interest Bill has her wedding party whacked by a gang of killers. By the end of the first volume, 2 of the 4 Bill underlings had been disposed of, leaving the Bride to exact her revenge against Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen) and Bill's current lover, the one-eyed Elle Driver (Darryl Hannah in super-bitch overdrive, a tasty character to be sure). Poor Budd had given up the world of murder for hire to become the under-appreciated bouncer at a California strip joint when the Bride re-enters his life, but he still has a knack for finding the "right" way of taking care of his former business. What he does to a captured foe is down right frightening for those who are claustrophobic or have a deep down fear of pre-mature burial. Elle on the other hand is calculating, cold, unwavering as she maneuvers herself through a transaction that leaves her on the winning end of the deal ultimately. Her battle with The Bride (where we finally learn her name, and the buildup really isn't that payoff we were looking for, but perhaps that was the point) is a Jerry Springer Show watcher's dream, two good looking blondes fighting it out in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. The outcome of that battle is ironic and leaves the viewer guessing what happens after the camera leaves the trailer. The ultimate scenes between the Bride and Bill are heartbreaking. Who would have guessed a movie with Quentin Tarantino, where nothing is to be taken seriously, has a genuine heart tugging set of events to end the film. Bill is played wonderfully by David Carridine, a man who knows who he is ("A murdering bastard"), knows how to raise the daughter of a woman he tried to kill (The Bride's daughter, THE source of the emotional conflict at the end of the movie), and even knows why he likes Superman over the other comic book hero's. Some people have complained that the ultimate scene was a bit of a letdown, and after the ballet of sword and fake blood that was the Bride-Crazy 88's battle in Volume 1, anything is quieter and slower and more poignant than that, and that's what Tarantino gives us here. There are no surprises to the plot of the movie as the story goes, but Volume 2 does fill in the holes on what happened, why everything happened the way they did, and how it made each character feel. The Bride is a warrior of zero emotion in Volume 1, the total opposite here in Volume 2. Tarantino goes from the far East film experience in Volume 1 to a Sergio Leone Western film in Volume 2 with sweeping landscapes, music featuring both guitars and trumpets (in fact, most of the most important songs are directly from A Fist Full of Dollars and other Leone movies), snakes and dirt and a dash for cash, all of which Clint Eastwood would feel at home in. The only thing I found askew when it came to Volume 2 was how complete it is compared to Volume 1. The credits give this away. Tarantino dips into the 1940s style of credits with fancy script fonts and the gray scale background, and even the opening music reminded me of something one would here at the beginning of a 1930s film. This is not a negative, but it just makes Volume 1 now feel like something to warm the audience up with, then the real meal comes with Volume 2. The credits go on for about 15 minutes and features a montage of all of the important characters in the movie, much like the end of the Super Mario Brothers video games, when you beat the game, the show you everyone you defeated to win it all. I don't know if Tarantino had that in mind when piecing it together, but it worked for me. After the day of playing the movie again through my mind, I found this movie much more satisfying than the first one. The story, the pace, the dialogue, all much slower, and slower is often better. The energy that is shown in Volume 1 is thrown away here, and the movie is much better for it. I personally think putting the two films back together would be risky. The styles are so different, the pace is so different between the two volumes, I don't know if I would enjoy a complete film as much as I do now as two separate pieces. Kill Bill, Volume 2 is a success from the story, the visuals, the music, and the actors all working as one, as the ultimate snake charmer, Tarantino, puts it all together.