The blood-spattered bride finally meets Bill

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2012)

After the almost non-stop action of volume one some people may be disappointed at the much slower pace of this film. The story opens with The Bride driving to her final Rendezvous with Bill and she announces that he is the last one left on her list. We then return to see what happened to Budd and Elle. Surprisingly this doesn't stop these confrontations from being intense... particularly the former where she finds herself facing almost certain death in a scene which is likely to disturb anybody who suffers from claustrophobia! At this point the story jumps back even further in time to the point where The Bride is in training with Pai Mei, an elderly kung-fu master; this explains how she can escape and ultimately what she will do when she meets Bill. While she was trapped Elle has killed Budd who had informed her that The Bride was dead; she learns that he was mistaken very shortly afterwards they clash Hattori Hanzo swords. Once Elle is out of the way it is time for The Bride to visit Bill and when she does she has a surprise; her daughter is still alive! Will this affect her plans or will she spare her daughter's father?
I preferred Volume One but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this too; it was good to learn a bit more about The Bride's past and find out just what she had done to make Bill angry enough to shoot her in the head. The scenes between David Carradine and Uma Thurman were brilliant; this was largely down to Carradine's voice, some how he managed to sound totally calm yet still be menacing. After the spectacular conclusion to volume one the final confrontation here seemed less than spectacular although this did make sense; Bill wasn't going to hide behind henchmen and his words were more important than his actions. As one would expect from a Tarantino film the music, much of it inspired by spaghetti westerns, went well with the action and as with volume one the style of the filming changed to suit the scene. For the most part I found the story exciting but I could have done without the scene where The Bride meets Bill's father figure; it slowed the story down at precisely the moment it needed to speed up and get her together with Bill. Over all though I recommend this film to anybody who liked the first part; although I'm sure there aren't many people left who liked the first and still haven't got around to watching this!