Very disappointing - nothing brilliant about it.

Rating: Null/10 (18 April 2004)

Major spoilers. Don't read unless you've seen.
I think we need to take a step back and look at some of the reaction to this film. This movie wasn't that good a movie. It wasn't bad - I liked it, but it wasn't nearly as groundbreaking or brilliant or marvelous as everyone seems to think. Characterization is inconsistent with what we saw in Vol. 1, and if this "expanded mythos" that Tarantino is so proud of gave reasons for these inconsistencies, then we should know them from watching the movie, not having to buy the book, the special extended DVD edition, or the super-mega-amazing director's cut collector's edition.
It seems that people just assume that Tarantino strikes gold every time he does ANYTHING, so they rant and rave about how much of a genius he is no matter what he does. Rather than answer a good deal of questions we had in Vol. 1, Vol. 2 just gave us a bunch of new questions - the answers to which were less than satisfactory. And Taranino's talent for dropping subtle hints is completely lost upon this plot. Rather than gentle foreshadowing, he beats us over the head, repeatedly, which makes certain aspects of the story VERY predictable. They basically told us how Bill would die about halfway through the movie, and told us how Elle lost her eye before they told us. Then, when the movie confirms these battering-ram foreshadows, it treats it like we'e supposed to be surprised?
Every single aspect of this film was a disappointment. Let's go over a few.
As I'm sure you all recall, in Vol. 1, the name of the Bride was bleeped out, and this continues through the first portion of the film. However, when her real name is revealed, it means nothing. Which makes you wonder why he ever bleeped it out in the first place. And if the answer is "just because," then why did he tell us her name at all? At least, in the fashion we were given. It was pointless. I could understand if we never found out her name until it was listed on the closing credits, but this was just stupid.
Now, character inconsistencies. In the first film, we are told that Elle hates the Bride. Fair enough. But, she is also willing to kill the Bride by poisoning her in her sleep, and flips out when she's ordered not to. But, in this film, she kills Budd, and her reason for doing so is, she says, because Budd managed to kill her. And this is, let's remember, after she told him to. Now, I wouldn't put killing Budd past Elle for a second, but I think if anything, it should've been for the money. She's proven, and continues to prove in Vol. 2, that she cares little for honour and the warrior code. So then why this sudden spark of sympathy?
And then there's Budd. All we know about him is that he's a hick. That's pretty much all we're given to work with. Every part of his character helps to reiterate this. That was done well enough, but for one thing - why did he keep the sword? Or at the very least, why would he lie to Bill and Elle about it? Now, I argued this with a friend, and she thought that it was because Budd loves Bill, but didn't want to show any sentimentality. While that does make a certain degree of sense, there's still the matter of what we're given. Until Vol. 2, we didn't even know that they WERE brothers, and their relationship is not at all elaborated on through the course of this film. I saw no actual evidence of why Budd would do something like this. Now, Tarantino professes that he made up elaborate backstories for all these characters to make their motivation more apparent to the actors, but here, it seems to have been a curse as opposed to a blessing. There can be a huge story behind these characters, but if it stays behind them, we never see it. Their actions were sloppy and pointless. And I really can't see Budd as anything but a hick, which makes we wonder if he was ever actually an assassin at all. I mean, it's only been four years, and he's just completely degenerated?
Onto Bill. Wow. I never realized just how crappy an actor David Carradine actually was. Everything is hokey and overdramatic. Now, I thought that this was supposed to be an homage to the chop-sockey, kung-fu media of old. Because he'd be great there. But he's stagnant and embarassing in any semblance of a dramatic environment. And the Bride, at this point, just killed O-Ren, who, we're told, he invested a lot in, Budd (he thinks she did, anyway), his brother, the only man he ever loved, and Elle, his (unless I misunderstood) current lover. But he never even brings that up. It doesn't seem to phase him, and yet, we're supposed to believe that he'd react to the Bride's leaving him the way he did. Even NOW, the only reason he seems at all upset with her is that she left him.
Pai Mei was my favourite part of the movie. The aged mentor character was true to form, complete with the all-consuming superiority complex and twisted humour at his pupil's failures. But he just seemed forced into the plot for no real reason. We got very little insight into his relationship with the Bride. When Elle announces that she murdered him, I wasn't sure if the Bride cared or not. Additionally, we're told, and are given no reason to believe otherwise, that Pai Mei is over a thousand years old. Given the stuff we've been given, that strikes me as a stretching our suspension of belief rather thin, and it just came out of nowhere. And THEN, there's also the matter that he's a kung-fu master, he's 1000 years old, and yet, Elle managed to kill him.
And finally, the Bride herself. Now, if I'm an experienced assassin, do I
just answer the door when I'm on assignment? If she hadn't dropped her pregnancy test, she would've been killed. So, it was luck. How the hell did she survive all this time if she makes such stupid mistakes? Let's remember that she's a former member of the Deadly Vipers, which means that she kills people for money. But we're never showed that. We're only showed the sins of the other five, as if Tarantino's afraid that we might lose faith in the Bride if she was portrayed as a ruthless assassin like O-Ren or Elle. But it would be more interesting if this baby actually CHANGED something. Instead, we're never shown the Black Mamba. We're only shown the Bride. Or, the happy-go-lucky student of Bill.
And the fights all sucked. The Budd fight didn't happen. The Elle fight was pretty intense, but too short, and what a crappy ending (and also, they're jumping up and around a trailer with a friggin black mamba somewhere in it, and it never comes up, and they don't seem to notice, and through it all, the Bride had bare feet). The Bill fight was probably twenty seconds long, and I'd seen half of it in trailers already. They never even stood up for it. For whole course of this friggin' movie, NO ONE GOT CUT WITH A SWORD. Probably one of the better fights was the one with Karen.

And then, there's a lot of carryovers from the first film that, now that you've seen the second, make no sense. Like, Sofie Fatale. The way they show the Two Pines Massacre, there was no possible way for Sofie to be in the chapel at the time, and there doesn't seem to be much reason, either.

And then there's Vernita Green. Now, give me a moment: The Bride wakes up in Texas. She hitches a ride to Okinawa, gets a sword made, then goes to Tokyo, uses the sword on O-Ren, travels to Pasadena, does NOT use the sword, and then goes back to Texas.
It almost seems like the movie was written to have Vernita killed FIRST. Especially since she loses the Pussy Wagon - which no one has seen and lived to tell about, yet Estoban somehow knows about it - apparently after that fight, and she GOT the Pussy Wagon when she killed Buck in Texas. Then, after killing Vernita, she went to Japan. This also makes more sense as she didn't have (or at least didn't use) the sword in the Vernita encounter. The movie just seems full of sloppy writing.
Now, this is just a personal nitpick, but I'll mention it anyway. This movie is a self-proclaimed homage to chop-sockey kung-fu crap, right? Well, then why not actually pay homage to it? This is a very staple archetype - you start off with the easy minions, and then work your way up to the most trying battle of the film. Yet, the Bride started off her revenge quest at the House of Blue Leave, where she single-handedly fought off hordes of supposedly skilled assassins, Johnny Mo, Go-go, and finally, she fought O-Ren while she was utterly exhausted. The Vernita fight wasn't nearly as taxing, though it was pretty intense. At least she got cut. Then, Elle took care of Budd for her, and Elle, like I said, never actually draws blood from the Bride. And then, the Bill fight was super-short and seemingly effortless on the part of the Bride. It seemed too easy for her.
Now, I liked it in spite of all this. I would recommend anyone to see it, but I don't think that anyone's redefining genres or whatever the crap all the critics are calling it. And Tarantino's making a mint off of this. He's announced plans to spin it off into a novel, he wants to rerelease it in theatres as a single movie, and he wants to make multiple special DVD editions, as well as multiple individual supplement discs. And, he also wants to make a Vol. 3 in fifteen years about Vernita's daughter Nikki coming after the Bride.
Tarantino already thinks he's god, so I fear that he's going to go the way of Lucas very very soon. I think another innovative filmmaker is about to bite the dust.