Kill Bill: Vol. 2

Plot synopsis:
During the opening credits, we see the Bride's bloodied face again and hear her say "Bill, it's your baby." In the first scene, she drives an open Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and says there is only one left to kill (which tells us she believes that Elle is dead). She is on her way to Bill.Chapter 6: The Massacre at Two PinesBack at the beginning (a black-and-white segment), at the Two Pines Wedding Chapel in El Paso, Texas, a dress rehearsal for a wedding is taking place. Reverend Harmony (Bo Svenson) and his wife (Jeannie Epper) decide that, since the bride will have no relatives present at the wedding, the groom's relatives and friends can sit on both sides of the aisle. The Bride (Uma Thurman), irritated with the reverend's wife, leaves the chapel to get some fresh air; on the way out, she is disturbed to hear flute music. On the front porch she finds Bill (David Carradine) sitting on a bench playing his bamboo flute. Bill asks her about her fiancé, Tommy (Christopher Allen Nelson), and what she's been doing for work; she's been working in Tommy's used record store, a job she says she enjoys. She asks him to "be nice" and he replies that he does not know how to be nice but will do his best to be sweet. They enter the hall and she introduces Bill to her fiancé as her father but rejects the fiancé's idea that, as her father, he should give her away at the ceremony. Bill politely replies that it would be "asking a lot" of him to do so but he'll happily join the congregation for the ceremony. As the bride and groom are called to the front by the Reverend Harmony, no attempt is made to introduce 'father' to the rest of the fiancé's family. Bill stays at the back of the chapel.Outside the chapel, four armed assassins appear, all dressed in black. In one line they move to the door, they enter, and the shooting starts, killing everybody inside except for the Bride and Bill.Back in the present (in color), Bill visits his younger brother Budd (Michael Madsen), a.k.a. Sidewinder, at his trailer in the middle of nowhere and warns him about the Bride. She will kill Budd if Budd does not allow Bill to protect him. They had differences in the past but they should move on. Budd, drinking as they talk, replies that maybe they should get killed because the Bride deserves her revenge. He then infuriates Bill by saying that he pawned his priceless samurai sword (a gift from Bill) for $250.Chapter 7: The Lonely Grave of Paula SchulzBudd goes to work at the strip club where he's employed as a bouncer. He arrives 20 minutes late and sees that there are no customers in the club. He talks briefly with the bartender, Jay (Sid Haig), before he is called into the office by his hot-tempered, coke-snorting boss Larry Gomez (Larry Bishop). In the office, Larry argues with Budd over being late again, and Budd talks back, saying that there is nobody in the bar and there was no need for him to be there. Larry takes away Budd's scheduled hours for several days and tells him in a rude tone not to come back to work until he hears from him. In the bar, Budd agrees to clean up after a broken toilet that a stripper named Rocket says is overflowing.Budd returns to his trailer, but standing in front of it suddenly freezes. He enters the trailer but looks out the window. The Bride, who was hiding under the trailer, sticks to the wall so he does not see her. When she opens the door Budd shoots her in the chest with a shotgun loaded with rock salt. While she lies wounded on the ground, Budd, very pleased with himself, injects her with a sedative. He phones Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and offers to sell her the Bride's Hattori Hanzo sword for a million dollars. Elle agrees to bring the money in the morning. Her condition is that the Bride must suffer to her last breath.At a cemetery, Budd and an accomplice dig a large hole in the ground in which they plan to bury the wounded Bride alive. When the grave has been dug, the Bride is given a choice: if she does not resist, she'll be given a flashlight; if she does, Budd will burn her eyes with mace and leave her buried alive in darkness. She chooses the flashlight, is put in a coffin and the lid is nailed down. "This is for breaking my brother's heart," says Budd. Budd and his accomplice lower the coffin into the ground, cover it with soil, and drive off. The Bride panics for a short time and recalls her training under Pai Mei.Chapter 8: The Cruel Tutelage of Pai MeiIn a flashback, Bill and the Bride, who is very much in love with him, sit by a campfire somewhere in China and Bill, who calls her "kiddo," plays his bamboo flute. He tells her about his kung fu teacher Pai Mei (Chia-Hui Liu, credited as Gordon Liu), who is reputed to be a 1000 years old, and his 'five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique.' The technique involves five blows administered to particular pressure points on the body with the fingertips. Thereafter, the victim's heart explodes after he or she takes five steps. Pai Mei did not teach Bill the technique because he does not show it to anyone.At the foot of the stairs leading to Pai Mei's place in another part of rural China, Bill, who has just come down, informs the Bride that Pai Mei will take her as his pupil because he is a lonely old man. Bill's bruised face shows that he was hurt but he refuses to say what happened. Bill warns her not to show any disrespect or disobedience to Pai Mei because Pai Mei will kill her -- "he hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women." She climbs the steps and quickly is humiliated by Pai Mei, who scorns her fighting skills and her ethnicity. He challenges her to land one blow on him while they engage in hand-to-hand combat and the Bride fails, at one point trying to use a rock which Pai Mei tosses aside after grabbing her wrist. Pai Mei threatens to chop her hand off with a single blow and declares that her hand now belongs to him and she must strengthen it. Over the next several weeks, the Bride works hard (practicing martial arts forms, carrying buckets of water up the long, steep flight of stairs, and learning to eat with chopsticks) and learns hard. She finds striking a blow with her fist to break a hole through a thick wooden plank at close range the most difficult skill.Back to the present: still in the coffin, the Bride manages to remove her boots and the belt tying her feet together. She takes out a straight razor hidden in her boot and uses it to cut her hands free. She first tests the planking of the coffin lid for a weak spot, then hits the lid with her fist repeatedly. The planks becomes smeared with her blood but finally crack. She appears to swim up through the earth, and an arm emerges from the grave. The Bride crawls out. Covered in dirt and trailing dust behind her, she walks into a diner, sits down, and calmly asks for a glass of water.Chapter 9: Elle and IThe Bride walks a great distance across the desert and through the mountains. She reaches Budd's trailer in time to see Elle arrive.Elle enters the trailer and gives Budd a red suitcase full of money. He makes margaritas in a grubby blender and serves them in dirty jelly-jar glasses while she examines the sword. He opens the suitcase, gloats over the money, and is struck in the face by a venomous black mamba snake that was hidden among the bundles of cash. Before he dies, Elle tells him that she is sorry that such a "piece of shit" as himself was the one who managed to kill the Bride -- she deserved better. She phones Bill and tells him that the Bride has killed his brother but that she, Elle, has killed the Bride. Elle also reveals the whereabouts of the final resting place of the Bride (in the grave of Paula Schulz) and mentions the Bride's real name for the first time: Beatrix Kiddo.Beatrix flies in and immediately attacks Elle, landing a blow to Elle's chest with both feet. Their long and vicious fight destroys the trailer's interior. Elle gets hold of the Bride's sword during the struggle. In a golf bag, the Bride finds another katana, inscribed "To my brother Budd, the only man I ever loved, Bill" -- apparently Budd didn't pawn it after all. Beatrix asks Elle what Elle said to Pai Mei to make him pluck out Elle's eye. Elle says she called him a "miserable, old fool." Elle also tells Beatrix that she poisoned Pai Mei's favorite meal, fish heads, out of revenge and he died. As they face off, Elle relishes the irony of killing the Bride with her own sword. However, at close range, the Bride plucks out Elle's remaining eye and steps on it. Rather than finish killing Elle, Beatrix leaves the trailer, the black mamba hissing behind her as Elle shrieks and curses and flails.Last Chapter: Face to FaceIn Mexico, the Bride visits the courtly retired pimp Esteban Vihaio (Michael Parks), one of Bill's old mentors, and asks him to tell her where Bill is. He finally agrees because he thinks Bill would surely like to see her.She enters Bill's hacienda carefully, a gun in her hand, but is shocked to the point of tears when Bill and their small daughter B.B. (Perla Haney-Jardine), who she didn't know was alive, both play-shoot at her with toy guns. The Bride is stunned but joins them for a dinner of sandwiches. Bill explains to B.B. that he shot her mother because he was saddened when Beatrix abandoned him and angry when he found her engaged to be married to another man. The Bride spends good time with her daughter, who falls asleep. The Bride goes to speak to Bill.Sensing that Beatrix might attack him, Bill fires a warning shot, freezing Beatrix in her seat, then he shoots her with a truth-serum dart and waits for it to take effect. He asks her why she left him: because she wanted to keep their child safe, not wanting her to grow up to be assassins like them. When Bill asks her when she came to that decision, the Bride tells him the story:In a flashback to a hotel room: the Bride, who's been sent on an assassination assignment to Japan, discovers that she is pregnant. Another assassin, Karen Kim (Helen Kim), who spotted Beatrix when she arrived, shoots a hole in the door with a shotgun. The Bride, pointing her gun at Karen, convinces her that she is pregnant and persuades her to walk away, promising that she will do the same. As she leaves, Karen congratulates the Bride.Back in the present, Bill is puzzled because he believes that Beatrix is a natural born killer and cannot change. He asks if she enjoyed killing the other people on her revenge list, and the truth serum forces her to admit that she did. They agree to fight with swords on the beach -- then Bill suddenly attacks her as they sit on his patio. At the climax of a brief skirmish during which both remain seated, she strikes him with the five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique. She tells Bill that she did not mention that Pai Mei taught her the technique because she is a bad person. Bill disputes that. They share an affectionate farewell before he takes five steps and falls down dead.Later, while B.B. watches cartoons in their hotel room, Beatrix lies on the bathroom floor crying for a time over Bill. "The lioness has rejoined her cub, and all is right in the jungle." Later, she leaves with B.B. to start a new life.Before the credits roll, Beatrix's death list is written on the screen; the names of those she killed outright are crossed out. A question mark is written over Elle's name. Bill's name is not crossed out.

Tags: comedy, boring, neo noir, murder, mystery, western, dramatic, cult, violence, atmospheric, flashback, psychedelic, action, philosophical, romantic, tragedy, revenge, storytelling

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