Review
Review Date: 18-April-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK
Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004)
Not long before "Kill Bill: Volume 1" was released last fall, Quentin Tarantino and Miramax announced that since the long-anticipated revenge epic ran four hours in its final cut, they had decided to split the film in two. Now that I have seen the second half of the saga, I have serious doubts about the veracity of that account. "Kill Bill: Volume 2" bears as much of the Tarantino stamp as its forerunner, but it's a very different movie in style, tone, and the nature of its heroine; in fact, it's nothing at all like what I expected. Where the first was shadowed and indoorsy, this is bright and panoramic; where the first was rooted in hatred, this is rooted in longing; and where the first was a portrait of an inexorable dealer of death, this is a depiction of a person who fears, loves, makes mistakes, and learns to rise again. The interesting thing is, while "Kill Bill: Volume 2" may arguably contain more depth and character development, it made me miss the black-and-white simplicity of the drama's opening act.
The high points of "Volume 1" were Uma Thurman's portrayal of an assassin on a fated mission of vengeance and several scenes of hyperkinetic swordfighting. Unfortunately, only Thurman crosses over into "Volume 2," and she's not as dazzling or as central as before. Like "Pulp Fiction," Tarantino's most feted flick, "Volume 2" features a smattering of action and a large amount of talking, which seems designed primarily to maintain the writer/director's cred as the jester in the court of pop culture. The movie begins with a nicely nuanced flashback involving The Bride and her former lover/future killee Bill, and then suddenly wanders off on a detour about one of her targets (Michael Madsen) slouching through his pathetic life as a retired gun for hire and inveterate hick, giving and receiving bits of wisdom and humor along the way. His scenes start "Volume 2" off on a decidedly downbeat note, foreboding that our honeymoon with The Bride is over.
Back when she first awoke from a coma and started on her quest, The Bride was a force of rage beyond morality, a lone wolf punisher whose gender only gave her more to be pissed off about. This time, she's no longer a lone wolf or a force, but a very human entity and member of the sisterhood of females. Suddenly, the other women she knows, although killers, recognize and respect the bonds that unite them (including Darryl Hannah as The Bride's second-to-last target, Elle Driver); suddenly, when she pays a visit to a brothel run by a smarmy, abusive gentleman pimp, it seems like her self-esteem is more at risk than his jugular.
That The Bride takes on a softer side just when her chief enemies switch from women to men is disturbing; Tarantino apparently needs to subject her to the potency of specific males as well as their general socio-sexual tyranny in order to complete his homage to the cult of femininity. Thus we find her showing the first signs of fallibility and almost losing to Madsen's hick, and we see flashbacks to the days of her tough-love training under kung-fu master Pei Mei (Gordon Liu). Most of all, we get a close look at Bill himself, who, it turns out, was The Bride's tutor, father figure, and greatest love all rolled into one. It's only fitting that the eponymous dead man should have an extended appearance (and be portrayed by someone as spellbinding as David Carradine), but in making The Bride more personally vulnerable and forcing her to share the spotlight, Tarantino robs the saga of much of its oomph.
The director, and others, would probably argue that the heroine's transformation from a brutal, single-minded avenger to an emotionally susceptible, well-rounded (and more traditional) woman propels her beyond superheroism and onto the pedestal of a goddess. Personally, I prefer the superhero, whose motives and metaphors don't involve quite so much unsettling pop philosophy. "Kill Bill: Volume 2" may represent the work of a filmmaker who likes to reinvent genres, mythologies, and even his own characters, but it doesn't fulfill the promise of what came before.
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
