OK so now for the second part of my look at Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece, Kill Bill, and I will cover Volume 2 here, where the Bride continues her quest for revenge against her former lover, Bill, who left her for dead. So without any further ado let's give this one a look...
So the story begins with the flashback of the Bride (Uma Thurman) being paid a surprise visit by Bill (David Carradine) at her dress rehearsal for her wedding, where Bill appears to give her his blessing to marry her groom Tommy (Chris Nelson) but instead the Deadly viper squad then ambush the rehearsal and kill everyone. The story then moves forward to the present with the Bride seeking out the next member of the Deadly viper squad on her hit list, Bill's brother, Budd (Michael Madsen), whom she follows home from work as he lives out in the middle of the desert in a trailer. As the Bride attempts to charge in with her samurai sword, Budd shoots her with his shotgun which is loaded full of rock salt
and he then buries her alive in a coffin. The story then flashes back to when the Bride was first initiated in her training by Bill as she meets the cruel martial arts master, Pai Mei (Gordon Liu) where he at first ridicules her but slowly the Bride gains his respect as she trains hard and develops her martial arts skills. The story then moves forward to the present again where the Bride manages to loosen one of her boots and takes from it a straight razor and uses it to cut her bonds and she then uses her incredible
punching skills she learned from Pai Mei (Gordon Liu)
to break free of her coffin and crawl her way up out
of the earth back up to the surface to freedom.
After this
Budd calls up one of his ex-viper squad members Elle Driver (Daryl
Hannah) who wears an eyepatch on one eye, and asks if she would want to
trade the Bride's Hanzo sword for a million dollars. Elle comes along
to Budd's cabin the next day and secretly stashes a black mamba snake in
the suitcase of money, which bites Budd several times on the face and he eventually succumbs to his wounds and dies just after Elle reads out information she acquired about the black mamba snake and the devastating effects of its poison. Elle then calls Bill to tell him that Budd has died and that the Bride has been buried in a coffin and during the call gives the Bride's real name as Beatrix Kiddo. However just as Elle is about to leave the trailer, Beatrix flies into the room delivering a brutal kick to Elle and they engage in an intense fight, which Beatrix eventually wins by plucking out
Elle's only remaining eye (the other one was plucked out by Pai Mei
during her instruction and Elle reveals that she killed Pai Mei herself by poisoning his fish heads) but decides not to kill her and instead leaves the trailer with Elle screaming hysterically, flailing helplessly and now blind. After this Beatrix then travels to the Mexican countryside where she finally tracks down Bill but when she arrives and finds Bill she is given a surprise she did not expect as she sees her daughter, B.B, is alive and well. Beatrix spends the night with Bill and B.B. and after Beatrix puts her daughter to bed, she goes down and confronts Bill for the last time.....
If I had to pick a favourite part of Kill Bill I would have to say Volume 2 is it for me as here we get to see the Bride's character really start to emerge and we also get to see a bit more of her human side, which is good in itself especially after the bloodbath of the first film where the Bride is primarily a relentless killer on the hunt for revenge. Volume 2 is more character driven as well than Volume 1 and it also allows us to see more of Beatrix's backstory as well as that we also finally discover her real name as you might remember any instance of her name used in Volume 1 was bleeped out. The second film also draws a more vivid picture of Bill as well and while he is still very much a ruthless killer and as he himself even puts it "a murdering bastard" you can also see how he was hurt by Beatrix's sudden decision to run away from her job as an assassin and let him think she was dead all this time she had been away.
Getting onto the performances of the film Uma Thurman is great again as the Bride and she adds more elements to her character than before as we now see her more as a person in Volume 2 than in the first film, through her stages of training under Pai Mei's tutelage, her engagement with her fiance Tommy, and also her relationship with Bill. Uma has quite a few highlights in the film such as the scene where Beatrix first meets Pai Mei, who mocks her fighting skills, which he sees as inferior and also the montage scene of Beatrix training with Pai Mei and she keeps practising her punching skills against a hard block of wood, and there is an amusing moment where Beatrix wakes herself up by inadverntently punching the wall with her fist! Another highlight is of course Beatrix's fight scene with Elle, which remains one of the best scenes in the film and one of the best fight scenes aswell. And as the two of them fight, Beatrix finds Budd's Hanzo sword (who Budd had previously lied to Bill that he pawned it) and Elle asks what it is and Beatrix replies "Budd's Hanzo sword!" and Elle says "Budd said he pawned it" and Beatrix smiles and says "Guess that makes him a liar now doesn't it?". And as Elle taunts Beatrix by telling her that she poisoned Pai Mei and also that she will soon kill her and take her sword "Which in the immediate future will become my sword!" and Beatrix says "Bitch! You don't have a future!" just before they clash swords and Beatrix then plucks out Elle's eye. Then there is the funny moment where the Bride punches her way out of her coffin and manages to climb her way to freedom up through the Earth and it then cuts to a diner, where we see an employee look out the window and we see the dusty and dithering figure of Beatrix slowly walks towards the diner. And Beatrix covers in muck, dust and Earth enters the diner, sits down and calmly says "May I have a glass of water please?".
Then there is of course a great moment where Beatrix finally tracks down Bill's whereabouts and as she enters Bill's expansive house, she is stunned to see her daughter B.B. and she nearly falls to the floor in shock and it remains one of Uma's best moments in the film. This is then followed by the great confrontation scene where Beatrix and Bill talk with one another and Bill shoots her with a truth serum dart in the knee and as he does Beatrix groans loudly and says "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SHOOT ME WITH???!". And in the scene Beatrix tells Bill why she ran away from him, which cuts to the flashback scene of Beatrix in a hotel room, taking a home pregnancy test, which turns blue, but she is then confronted by a rival assassin who tries to kill her but then they engage in a stand-off as both point guns at one another. Beatrix then tries to reason with the assassin and tells her "I just found out, just a moment before you blew a hole in the door, that I'm pregnant!" and she get's the assassin to read the instruction of the pregnancy test to confirm it and Beatrix says to her "I'm the deadliest woman in the world, but right now I'm just scared shitless for me and my baby!" and the assassin let's her go saying "congratulations!" before running off. Then there is Beatrix and Bill's final scene together where Bill asks her if his reaction was so surprising and she says to him "Yes, it was. Could you do what you did? Of course you could. But I never thought you would or could do that to me!" and Bill says she thought wrong, which prompts Beatrix put her samurai sword on the table and she says "You and I have unfinished business....!".
Moving onto David Carradine who is great in his role as Bill and the film also helped revive his career somewhat as well. Carradine also has some great moments in the film, such as his first scene where he meets with Beatrix during the flashback of the wedding rehearsal and Beatrix hears him play the flute and they meet eyes and he says to her "Hello Kiddo" and she asks "How did you find me?" and he says "I'm the man". Then there is the scene where Bill meets with his brother Budd and he tells him how Beatrix killed the Crazy 88 and he says "There wasn't really 88 of them, they just called themselves the Crazy 88" and Budd asks why and Bill says "I dunno. I guess they thought it sounded cool!". Another good scene from Carradine is where Bill drives Beatrix to Pai Mei's temple so they can start her training, and he comes down the long steps, his face beaten looking as they had a fight. And Bill tells Beatrix of Pai Mei "Now remember, no backtalk, no sarcasm. At least not for the first year. You're gonna have to let him warm up for you. He hates Caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women, so in your case that may take a little while!". And then there is the scene where Beatrix and Bill confront one another at the end and he gives his speech on how Superman unlike other superheroes disguises himself, in this case as Clark Kent and uses that anology for Beatrix pretending to be someone she is not by intending to marry her fiance Tommy. "And that's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race. Sorta like Beatrix Kiddo and Mrs Tommy Plimpton". And lastly there is the final scene between Bill and Beatrix where Beatrix says "You and I have unfinished business!" and Bill says "Baby... you ain't kiddin!" before they have their last fight and Beatrix (PLOT SPOILER, OF SORTS!) finishes him off with her five point palm-exploding heart technique (taught to her by Pai Mei). And with Bill's dying breaths he makes peace with Beatrix and says to her "You're not a bad person, you're a terrific person, you're my favourite person. But every once in a while you can be a real cunt!".
In the supporting cast Michael Madsen is also really good as Budd, Bill's somewhat downtrodden brother, who after the deadly viper gang disbanded, now works as a bouncer in a strip bar. Madsen also has some good moments in the film such as the scene where he meets with Bill and he reflects on Beatrix's quest for revenge and he says "I don't dodge guilt and I don't Jew out on paying my comeuppance. That woman deserves her revenge and we deserve to die. But then so does she! So I guess we'll just see, won't we?". Then there is the scene where Budd surprises Beatrix as she barges into his trailer and he blasts her full of rock salt and then afterward buries her alive. And as Budd is about to bury her he says "Now you are going into the ground tonight and that's all there is to it" and he gives her a flashlight and says "But if you're gonna be a horse's ass, I'll spray this whole can right in your eyeballs!" as he holds a can of mace in front of her eyes "Then you're gonna be blind, burnin and buried alive. Now which is it gonna be sister?". And later on when Budd meets with Elle he says to her of Beatrix "You gotta hand it to the old girl. I never anybody Buffalo bill the way she Buffaloed Bill. Bill use to think she was so damn smart. I tried to tell him "Bill, she's just smart for a blonde!".
Daryl Hannah is also really good in her part as the manipulative and conniving Elle Driver, who later confronts Beatrix in Budd's trailer. Hannah has always been something of an underrated actress and this film confirms that as she provides a fun and corny performance which works really well in the film. Hannah also rightfully appears to relish in the dialogue she is given as Elle and her main highlights are of course her scenes with Bill and later her fight Beatrix. Hannah also get's some good lines such as where the black mamba snake has just bitten Bill and he says to him "I'm sorry, Budd. That was rude of me, wasn't it? Budd, I'd like to introduce my friend, the black mamba. Black mamba, this is Budd". And Elle proceeds to read some facts she gathered from the Internet on the Black mamba and she says "A bite to the face or the torso can bring death from paralysis within 20 minutes. The single amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan! You know I've always like that word "gargantuan", I so rarely have the opportunity to use it in a sentence!". And Elle then continues to say to Budd as he is dying from the snake bites from the Mamba, "Now in these last agonising minutes of life you have left, let me answer the question you asked earlier more thoroughly. Right now the biggest "R" I feel is regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever known, met her end at the hands of a bushwhackin, scrub, alky piece of shit like you! That woman deserved better!". Then lastly there is of course Hannah's fight scene as Elle takes on Beatrix and he taunts her by telling her that Pai Mei plucked out her eye because she called him "A miserable old fool!" and that she poisoned "That miserable old fool!". And Elle then finally says to Beatrix "That's right I killed your Master! And now I'm gonna kill you, too, with your own sword no less, which in the very immediate future will become my sword!". And we all know what happens next!
And lastly also a quick mention must also go out to Gordon Liu who is great in his role as the cruel Pai Mei, the martial arts master who belittles Beatrix at every turn but he eventually gains her respect, which he shows his appreciation by flicking his long silver beard! Liu, who says all his lines in Madarin, also has some great moments particularly his first scene with Beatrix where he taunts and teases her and he says such things as "I despise the Goddamn Japs!" and also how "You're so called skills are quite pathetic!". And later as Beatrix struggles to punch the wooden wall block, Pai Mei taunts her again and says "Its the wood that should fear your hand, not the other way round! No wonder you can't do it, you acquiesce to defeat before you even begin!".
Finally getting onto Quentin Tarantino as the director he does a great job here again with Volume 2 and here he shows off his filmmaking skills yet again with some great camerawork and striking cinemaphotography from Robert Richardson. Tarantino also pays homage to the kung-fu films of the 1970s which he clearly illustrates in the flashback scene where Beatrix begins her training with Pai Mei and uses some amusing close-up shots when the camera zooms in on a character (in this case Pai Mei). Tarantino also provdes a fine soundtrack to the film aswell as he has selected an eclectic and effective mix of tracks such as Malcolm McLaren's "About her" when Beatrix lies on bed with her daughter B.B. It also features other well used tracks by Ennio Morricone for several scenes in the film such as the scene where Beatrix escapes her coffins.
As for Volume 2's flaws...... well it get's most things right so there isn't too much worth quibbling over, although I would have to say there are still one or two niggles, such as the fact the film does feel just little bit long and there are certain scenes which are drawn out, particularly when Beatrix and Bill finally confront one another and it features that silly speech where Bill basically compares Beatrix to Superman, as someone pretending to fit into the world as someone they are not. Its a pretty longwinded way for Bill to make his point to Beatrix and in the end it just feels like a pretty nerdy monologue written by Tarantino himself. I also thought that their final fight scene was a bit of a letdown as well as its over in about 10 seconds and ends up with Beatrix killing Bill (indeed!) with the five-point palm exploding heart technique, which in a way is a bit of anti-climax after all the very impressive fight scenes on offer in the two films leading up to this point. The film's final credits sequence is also a bit naff and is accompanied by Robert Rodriguez's typically Spanish music and features a pretty cheesy moment where we finally get to Uma Thurman in the cast list and we cut to a shot of Beatrix driving her car and it says "Uma Thurman as The Bride, aka Beatrix Kiddo, aka Black Mamba, aka Mom". Yes we get it Quentin, you don't have to spell all her nicknames out for us!
But that all aside Kill Bill Volume 2 is an excellent ending to the story and overall Kill Bill itself pretty much remains Quentin Tarantino's best film and one day he might top it, but it will take some doing no doubt.
And I will FINALLY leave you there and will be back sometime soon with a different post (of sorts, actually probably covering the next episode of The Apprentice).
Night!
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