Terrific, Moody, Slow-Burning Spaghetti Western Conclusion To Kill Bill Saga

Rating: 7/10 (18 June 2005)

The Kill Bill saga concludes as The Bride continues her rampage of revenge, targeting the three remaining members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad - El Paso cowboy Budd, one-eyed swordswoman Elle Driver and the enigmatic Bill himself.
Kill Bill Volume 2 is a great follow-up to the first movie, but also a different kind of film with a very different pace and mood. Where its precursor is fast, frenetic and action-packed, this movie is much more mellow and contemplative and its relatively few kung-fu scenes are short and snappy. What I enjoyed most is that we finally get to see the great Carradine strut his stuff as Bill, the baddest hombre in the west. Despite the change of pace, Tarantino is as inventive as ever with his film grammar, using filters galore, old-style telephoto zooms, a great blackout scene (when The Bride is buried alive) lots of wild overhead shots and all his usual wacky music cues - there is a particularly beautiful shot which uses an Ennio Morricone cue from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly to introduce Carradine (playing his flute from the TV show Kung Fu). The performances are all terrific again - Thurman manages to keep her performance dead straight amongst a gallery of nutcases, Madsen and Hannah shine and Liu and Parks are both great playing different characters to the ones they play in the first movie. Tarantino has succeeded in making a tremendous double-barrelled kung-fu classic.