not enough original spin on traditional genres

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2004)

Sometimes I think the mythology behind Quentin Tarantino is greater than the reality. Tarantino, of course, attracted a following of critics and film buffs with his ultra-violent tale of cops, robbers and betrayal, Reservoir Dogs, then broke into Hollywood's upper echelon with his seminal tale of hitmen and other ne'er-do-wells, Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction's music became annoyingly prevalent everywhere, and the dialogue between stars John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson was quoted everywhere. Since then, however, Tarantino's record has not been all that impressive. He exec-produced and acted in From Dusk Till Dawn, his modern-day horror yarn of vampires in the dusty southwest desert, a miserable failure despite the star power of hunky George Clooney. He returned to directing, and resurrected the career of 1970's black action star Pam Grier, with Jackie Brown, another intriguing tale of good guy thieves that failed to live up to the hype. Along the way, there was always talk of Tarantino's genius, but it always centered around Pulp Fiction, and yet there was never any solid follow-up. Then came Kill Bill, Vol. 1, with its quirky dialogue, impossibly high body count and kitschy homages to Sergio Leone `spaghetti westerns' and Bruce Lee `chop-socky' movies. `Tarantino is back!' fans and critics exalted, and with the impending release of Kill Bill, Vol. 2, the anticipation has been strong and widespread. But while Tarantino honored film masters and genres in his earlier movies through a sly reworking of codes and conventions, as well as a brilliance for scripting indelible dialogue, here he seems content to allow others to dictate his style.
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 picks up where Vol. 1 left off, with the Bride, Beatrice Kiddo (Uma Thurman), having made it past numerous groups of hired killers, now hot on the trail of Bill (David Carradine) the man who left her for dead four years earlier after putting a bullet in her head. She first sets her sights on Bill's brother, Budd (Michael Madsen), who sidetracks her for a while by burying her alive. She moves on to Daryl Hannah's eye-patched Elle before ultimately coming face to face, once again, with her one-time mentor and murderer, Bill.
Along the way, we get some of the back story leading up to Bill's attempted assassination of Beatrice filled in, as well as details of their relationship together, as a way of explaining his motivation for trying to do her in, so the film effortlessly crosscuts from past to present, as that which came before comments on the action at hand. Bill's tutelage of Thurman's youthful assassin, his securing her apprenticeship with the harsh martial arts taskmaster, Pei Mei, and Bill's sense of betrayal resulting in the Massacre at the Two Pines which began this epic tale of bloody revenge.
Tarantino pulls out all the stops in this homogenized homage to pop cinema history. There's the Hitchcock-inspired black and white photography during the film's opening monologue. A pullback from inside Two Pines recalls Orson Welles' audacious opening to Touch of Evil, while quick zoom-ins, flashy fast cuts, and the over-the-top acting of the white hair and bearded Pei Mei during Beatrice's grueling tutelage are culled from classic Kung Fu movies. The desert scenes are accented by Hugo Montenegro-inspired music recalling Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, while other scenes are propelled by 70s influenced action music, calling to mind iconic influences like Chips, Starsky and Hutch and The Streets of San Francisco.
But while Tarantino indulges his obvious fetish for classic pop culture and cinematic history, and while Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is very much a satisfying conclusion to this blood-soaked saga of retaliation and retribution, Tarantino gives us no surprises. There is nothing here to make you sit up in your chair and gasp, `did that really just happen?' Even the script, the Tarantino specialty that typically crackles with one pop reference after another, doesn't jump out with any wildly quotable lines of dialogue. That's because Tarantino seems so intent on saluting his own mentors by resurrecting their styles, he's forgotten to craft his own.