Please Kill Me, Volume 2

Rating: Null/10 (2 December 2004)

Jesus Mr. Tarantino, vol. 1 was so good. You brought out the best acting in Uma Thurman that I've ever seen, Pulp Fiction included. I didn't know she had the ruthlessness in her, the determinism, everything the role of Beatrix required. Even the nurturing side. The character of 'The Bride' you and Uma created she played perfectly. And what's more, when she was trying to get herself to 'wiggle your big toe' in the car, she looked so ugly I actually could believe she had been in a coma for four years. And then in the wedding chapel, she looked beautiful. And in the fighting sequences--my God I had no idea she (as Oren puts it later a 'Caucasian girl with a samurai sword') could actually look good doing kung fu. A truly resourceful actress.
The soundtrack deserves honourable mention. Isaac Hayes, Al Hirt, Bernard Herrmann and Nancy Sinatra are definitely gigantic shoulders for your movie to stand on. Good for you.
Oren Ishii's animation sequence was the best part of the film. More specifically, the way it tied in perfectly with the live action scenes made your use of Anime absolutely excellent, timely, even (and I'm shocked to say it) tasteful. And the length to which you developed her character was such that even the horrid actress Lucy Liu with that squeaky little voice of hers seemed intriguing playing her role. The fight sequence in the winter garden at the Blue Lotus was the most stunning scene, particularly the grace Liu achieves in the kimono and when taking off her sandals in the snow. Gorgeous cinematography there.
Before I go on, I must say that the only reason I'm critiquing your film is because I KNOW you could have done better. Way better. You're an excellent screenwriter and director, and you really built up our hopes with volume one for the reasons I've listed above. What happened to the intrigue that you built up in volume 1? What happened to the fight scenes? For some reason, in the first one the plot seemed so much more believable, even that scene at the Blue Lotus with the Crazy 88's and Gogo. But in the second one you lost it. Your film almost achieved mainstream glory, but fell just short enough to 'maybe' get a cult following. Maybe. Here's why:
Vivica Fox barely got any attention, and her character Copperhead seemed anticlimactic, besides the surreal scene in front of her green pointy-roofed house and the suburban fight scene. Why was she in the film? Just so Beatrix could have five names to cross off? So the DVAS would be ethnically stereotypical enough to mimic seventies superhero teams or their like? Same goes for Budd. He didn't seem bad ass at all, just evil and dumb, what with his burying her alive and his cowboy hat and mobile home. Did you write pasts into the script for Budd and Copperhead and have to delete them later? Oren's story built it up like all of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad was likewise going to have a 'past' which would figure somehow in Beatrix's revenge on each of them, but this simply wasn't the case with any of the other characters.
Elle Driver. Oh my god you could have made her so much more captivating. When Twisted Nerve was playing at the hospital and Beatrix was in a coma, I thought I would shit myself in my seat watching Daryl Hannah in that red-cross eye patch and nurse's uniform, I couldn't wait to see what she would do with her syringe full of red poison. She seemed THE PERFECT insane nemesis to Black Mamba. But in the second one, she was not given a past besides her training by and subsequent killing of Pai Mai and her ruthless attempt to make Mamba die and suffer. Why did SHE hate Beatrix so much? You should have given Elle as much treatment as you did Oren, and possibly with animation too. In the second one she was just some post-Feminist bitch who killed any man who would condescend to look into her one eye.
Pai Mai. Eek. Those eyebrows and white wig and taped-on beard were all fake. In a single instant your movie moved from being a compelling reworking of cheesy seventies martial arts images into a blatant and even slap-stick rip-off (a TIRED rip-off) of old kung fu movies. Why didn't you get an ACTUAL old Mandarin sage-type instead of a clearly young man? You didn't even bother to put lines in his face or give him crow's feet, so your audience didn't really know what to make of this new character. Do we take him seriously, as when his tutelage proves useful getting Beatrix out of Pamela Shultz's grave? Should we fear him, as when he pulls Beatrix's arm behind her or when Bill informs Beatrix that he hates Americans, white people, and women? Or do we laugh at him, as when he strokes his beard when he's pleased at himself? You know as well as I do that your movie would have been stronger if Beatrix's time with Pai Mai was represented by a short few memories instead of over ten minutes of watching Uma flapping her wrists at a board and getting hit in the face with a forked stick.
OK, here's where I'm sure a lot of the audience is going to disagree with me, but I have to say that I didn't like the little kid. I didn't understand Bill's nurturing side, and I didn't get why the kid was so dumb and thought that 'Mommy was asleep for four years because Daddy went bang-bang at Mommy's head.' Now really Quentin, a girl raised by a ruthless assassin, even a four-year-old, would know a thing or two about cruelty and killing. Children aren't stupid, and what's more they're actually emotional sponges. Instead B.B. was a glaringly not-curious child who seemed to know her estranged mother at first sight, furthermore she seemed oblivious to the very real conflict going on between the father she knows and this strange woman who pops into her house with a gun pointed at her. You really needed to develop her more. I'm not sure that she killed her fish on purpose, you left that sort of vague. Wouldn't it have been more to the plot if you'd made her a conniving little monster instead of a sweet, oblivious little television-watching idiot? Maybe she would be angry at her mother, or overjoyed at seeing her? Show any emotion, perhaps? Instead she was some uber-cute figment of Beatrix's coma-emptied womb: a little house pet who clings on to anything that tucks her into bed, everything she could wish for. How trite. Instead of giving up her glamorous career as an assassin 'to protect my baby' maybe Beatrix should have had an abortion.
The history of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad as a group. It simply isn't there, you leave it wide open. Maybe this would have been successful if the minor characters were a bit stronger, like Elle or Copperhead or Budd, but they were all without pasts. You could have resolved this GAPING hole in your plot by portraying how they formed, their relationships with each other, or (possibly most importantly) how their special skills attracted Bill at first. I'd be interested in seeing the cuts you made from the film, which albeit are quite voluminous. I'd wager there's a lot of stuff there you should have kept. But you didn't, and the strength of your film is completely deflated because of it.
Why on earth did you make Bill so mellow? His only depth came from the dialogue about 'Clark Kent is the mask Superman wears to blend in with us, it's his comment on humanity. . .', that was compelling. I was expecting more brutality, but instead Bill turns out to be a somewhat persuasive, older samurai has-been with enough chemical know-how to wield truth serum. And he plays a wooden flute. I don't believe that a Renaissance man like that, who talks so sweetly to his four-year old about how much he loves Mommy, could have put a bullet through her head. Maybe I'm an unrealistic audience to go by, but that was simply a let down. For that to work, Bill should have been more blatantly psychotic (the same advice I gave for Elle). You'd think that we'd care more whether the title character of the movie lived or died, but I for one did not.