Now with less exaggeration, less reference and a film with a much more paced rhythm, 'Kill Bill Vol. 2' bets on phenomenal dialogues, script and free controlled violence

Rating: 8/10 (15 May 2020)

With the critical and public success of the first part and many outstanding issues, volume 2 of 'Kill Bill' comes to close all loose ends and surprise us with the mishaps faced by the Bride on her way in search of revenge on her disaffected. After having eliminated two targets in the first half, now it is time to carry out the rematch against the other participants in the Texas chapel massacre.
After being betrayed by Bill (David Carradine) and his former group, the murderous Bride (Uma Thurman) is on the verge of death for four years. After waking up from a coma, she goes after each of her former companions to kill them. In the second part of this quest for revenge, the bride will continue her search for Bill, attacking Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), the last two survivors of the group. The confrontation with her former master, and mastermind of her death, will reveal new surprises for the assassin.
If the first volume had a lot of graphic violence in a more cartoonish tone and a more accentuated side of humor, in this second part we have a change of tone. As the work was not originally intended to be displayed in two parts, this tone was already purposeful, but with the division it became even clearer. This does not mean that it is a film completely opposite to the previous one. Volume 2 continues to feature violent and elaborate scenes, highlighting the burial with our protagonist and revenge against the last two survivors of the group. The scenes, especially those of the burial, are much more like a horror movie. Uma Thurman's performance in these sequences is spectacular, giving us all the suffering and despair of the character.
However, it is clear that in this conclusion, Tarantino prefers to highlight other characteristics of his works. Knowing that this final part would have to explain issues just mentioned above and that, especially the confrontation with Bill, would have to bring an emotional and dramatic charge to the audience, he inserts much more text in the characters' mouths, with the right to analogies to superheroes and the change in direction that our protagonist wanted to take in her life from the moment she learned she was pregnant. All scenes of the Bride / Beatrix Kiddo with Bill, whether at the beginning or at the end of the film, are purely in the best Tarantino style. In addition, the director tells us what the Bride's real name is, how she learned to wield a sword in very good-natured scenes with master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu).
Now with less exaggeration, less reference and a film with a much more paced rhythm, 'Kill Bill Vol. 2' bets on phenomenal dialogues, script and free controlled violence. If the first focused much more on the plot and all its explosive action, now we have the focus shifted to the beginning and end of the story, the humanization of the characters and the reasons why we support them, where in fact we know everything. that happened until they reached that point at the conclusion of the film. The Bride, especially, thus becomes the most human character in the vast gallery and Tarantino.
In addition to the Bride, we also know the other characters. In Budd's case, we even get to know where he lives, where he works and what he does outside work. Bill is already an extremely interesting character, as we know his motivations for the sadistic act that started the story. Tarantino gives us a choice of who to support, presenting reasons, even if not rational, strong for Bill to have done his slaughter. With a cast chosen in the right measure to give meaning and motivations to the characters, everything becomes more visceral. For knowing how to conduct the work in these different aspects in comparison to volume 1 and, managing to deliver everything that is expected, we see a great leap by the filmmaker towards the real authorial work. Now Tarantino fans will be able to delight in all the director's signatures.
As with Sergio Leone's westerns, everything is very slow. Just to give you an idea, the Bride kills only one person throughout the film, but everything that happens has meaning and makes sense. The best part of this second part is its ability to subvert all expectations, bypassing them in a wise way, without frustrating them, but surprising with creativity and innovation. There are crucial moments in the plot that leave the viewer simply without imagining what will happen next, leading him to believe that the story has reached a dead end. It is not because it was a more serious and profound film that he doesn't have fun and is funny. The perfect example of this is in the figure of the master Pai Mei, extremely arrogant, but very wise. In its scenes, the technical part recreates precisely the types of samurai films on which the character was based. Although references are in lower numbers, in Volume 2 they are more obvious.
The soundtrack, as in all of the director's works, is yet another character in both volumes. On the two soundtracks, the songs range from country music to selections of spaghetti western punctuated by Ennio Morricone. Bernard Herrmann's theme from the film Twisted Nerve is whistled by the fearsome Elle Driver on the hospital scene. When The Bride enters Casa das Folhas Azuis, the go-go group The 5.6.7.8's plays 'I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield', 'I'm Blue' and 'Woo Hoo'. The connection with Lady Snowblood is further established by the use of 'The Flower of Carnage' in the final theme of the film and we cannot forget Gheorghe Zamfir The in the beautiful song 'Lonely Shepherd'. It also plays the song 'Shot Me Down', at the beginning of Vol. 1. In general, the songs on both volumes are very eclectic and that goes well with the film which also justifies the fact that the soundtrack was so acclaimed and considered by many one of the best of recent times.
Tarantino gave more life to his work, more reason and more feeling to everything. If the saga of revenge 'Kill Bill' had not been divided into two fundamentally the same, but in detail different. The way it was done, Tarantino gave us two masterpieces, two odes to genre cinema that work each in their own unique way to the point that it is an arduous task to choose which one is the best. The works complement each other. It remains to be seen whether a single three-hour film could not further raise the status of films. 'Kill Bill Vol. 2' is a sadistic, creative adventure full of pop references that serve both to honor and to please a new audience. The combination of the two volumes mixes everything and gives consistency to enter the mind of one of the most relevant directors of cinema.