I know I’m like 3 weeks late, but yesterday I finally got to see “Kill Bill Volume 2“, or simply, as the British Board of Film Classification called it, Vol. 2. So I figured I’d give my thoughts on both volumes at the same time, kinda like the way it was meant to be seen.
Kill Bill Volume 1
I’ll assume that most people have seen this, but if you haven’t, might as well look away now.
Kill Bill opens with a shot of a bloody and beaten bride (Uma Thurman) talking to a disembodied voice before she gets shot point blank in the head which doesn’t kill her, but puts her in a coma for 4 years, when she finally comes to she sets out on a “roaring rampage of revenge” against the DiVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) who put her where she is today. In typical Tarantino fashion the movie then starts jumping about the timeline like no ones business as the first target, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), is really the second.
The opening fight is a pretty intense, if a little catty, affair broken up by a funny moment when Green’s infant daughter arrives home from school in the middle of a knife fight. If you think that’s good, it only gets better as it goes on… We flashback to the aftermath of The Bride’s wedding massacre and her time in hospital, and it wouldn’t be a Tarantino film if there wasn’t something sick going on, like say a hospital worker renting out her comatose body to guys to have sex with… Of course, she wakes up as the latest guy climbs on top of her and the blood begins to spill like no-one’s business. Fast forward to Japan as The Bride tracks down O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) who runs the Tokyo underworld, cutting off people heads for fun, we see a bit of back story on O-Ren done in an Anime style which was probably the best decision as it deals with a few disturbing moments, paedophilia for one.
So we get to the big hyped fight between The Bride and O-Ren’s personal army, The Crazy 88. And is it worth the wait and all the hype? Of course it is… The Bride literally cuts a swathe through The Crazy 88 with a samurai sword, limbs are sliced off, jets of blood stream everywhere as, one-by-one, everyone meets the business end of The Bride’s Japanese Steel.
Well that’s the plot outline, the movie it’s self is simply fantastic. Completely differing styles merge together seamlessly, like the anime bits, the fight scene with The Crazy 88 cuts to black & white halfway through as well as various slow motion bits. It also has a great soundtrack as well as original music by Wu-Tang Clan member The RZA, plus what not to like when it has a special appearance by The 5,6,7,8’s?
Highly recommended.
Kill Bill Volume 2
If you haven’t seen Volume 1, don’t even consider seeing Volume 2 as, like the Lord of the Rings movies, there is no recap of what’s happened (as such) at the start, but we do find out the Wedding Massacre wasn’t a wedding at all, it was a wedding rehearsal…
Anyways, 2 down, 3 to go on The Bride’s list, next up is Budd (Michael Madsen), brother of Bill, who is now living in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere in Texas, bouncing a titty bar for a living, but Bill tips him off about The Bride’s recent events and he’s ready for her as he unloads a few rounds of rock salt into her as she breaks into his trailer, he then takes her to a graveyard and buries her alive. We then cut to the Bride’s brutal training in China some years before with Pai-Mei (and his comical beard stroking).
She, of course, breaks out of the coffin and escapes the grave and makes a beeline straight to Budd’s to finish the job, but Budd has made a deal with the only other member of the DiVAS left, the one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), who double crosses him and kills him. So The Bride breaks in and the two fight it out… Needless to say, Elle is beaten in a really wonderful, yet sickening, way… So all that is left is Bill (David Carradine) and the small matter of The Bride’s & Bill’s daughter (which she thought she lost when in the coma). The title of the movie gives the ending away.
This movie is totally different from Volume 1, which was more of an oriental feel, this one is more of a spaghetti western (with a touch of 80’s martial arts movie training montages thrown in for added measure). In retrospect it was probably better to split the movie into 2 movies as the pace would probably have been totally screwed up at the join (of course, a bit of sly editing could eliminate this) but as a movie on it’s own, Volume 2 is probably better than Volume 1, both are fantastic and I’m hoping that Tarantino and Miramax see sense and release a single cut of Kill Bill on DVD in the not-too-distant future, probably with a bit of editing in the way scenes are played out but it would be good to see the whole thing.
Highly recommended, if not more so, but again, you’d be stupid to go see this without seeing Volume 1.
If you’ve already seen both, why not check out the Kill Bill Reference Guide to see where the inspiration for some places came from…