Review: "Kill Bill: Volume 2" (2004)
Appologies that this isn't getting up sooner, It's been a busy day. To avoid my tendency to ramble and, lord knows, on this one I could, lets do this numerically:
1.) This is the best film thus far released in 2004, and will be a hard contender to beat for the best of the "Summer Movie Season" (yes, even though it's not quite "Summer" yet.) If you're any kind of fan of great moviemaking, go see this (AFTER you see #1, now available for rental, if you haven't already.)
2.) "Kill Bill," as a completed movie, story and universe, is Quentin Tarantino's best film. The one-time "wunderkind" hotshot has matured (ironically, by "regressing" back into the pure video store Geekiness from whence he was spawned) into a writer/director of such energy and talent that he can at-once flawlessly balance AND beneficially merge dozens upon dozens of different genre styles, dialogue approaches and dramatic tones with an expertise that turns what could have been simple self-indulgent genre-clashing into a full, rich cinematic tapestry: Close-to-midpoint, when a heroic modern-day Samurai swordswoman finds herself in a deathtrap that would've been at home in a 70s schlock-horror chiller following a conflict with a heavy reminiscient of the original "Walking Tall" calls on her memories of training under an ancient White Lotus martial-arts master, the MOST unusual thing going on is how "real" Tarantino has made this collision of movie-fantasies seem.
3.) Wonderful though it may be, it does offer a certain confirmation that Miramax/Tarantino probably should've released this as one movie: This was meant to play as a one-shot-deal, and it does show. That it shows doesn't HURT this film on it's own, but it does have the effect of transforming the rythym of Tarantino's work from what (we can now see for certain) was meant as an epic tour through the B-movie subgenres that primarily shaped QT's directorial psyche into two mini-epics; the first paying it's regards to Blaxploitation, Anime and Japanese Samurai films, the second moving on to Chinese Kung-Fu, 70s Sleaze/Noir and Spaghetti Westerns.
4.) Uma Thurman, her story now concluded, deserves not only to be nominated for every applicable major acting award, she deserves to win them. What Quentin does as a director, she matches as an actress. Most major starlets would find the delivery of intensely-realistic dramatic emotion or the weilding of a samurai sword or martial-arts choreography or deft comedic timing to be enough challenge for INDIVIDUAL FILMS, but here the film demands Thurman to do ALL OF THAT and more not just in a single film but often in a single SCENE! I've always suspected it, but here she proves it for all time: Uma Thurman is one of the best actresses working in film today. In the world. PERIOD.
5.) Quentin Tarantino is possibly the best director in terms of the use of actors working in Hollywood: Not only does he provide the roles, dialogue and direction to nudge Michael Madsen and Darryl Hannah, (both of who's careers have been on the low end of the bell curve lately,) into perhaps the best performances of their careers; he has afforded David Carradine, who most had erroneously written off as a one-hit has-been only on-hand as a living peice of the film's 70s pop-culture cornucopeia, the vehicle for which to leap from "pop icon" RIGHT PAST "good actor after all" and straight to "MOVIE GOD." Carradine, as Bill, OWNS every scene he's in, his "Bill" is one of the great movie villians of all time: We're talking "Darth Vader" or "Khan" territory here. A star known for action roles in an action movie, Carradine hear is given a role that consists almost entirely a astonishingly-delivered dialogue, culminating in a trio of discussion-monologues in the final act which rank as movie dialogue for the ages.
6.) The other small drawback of the films' truncated release is that the tendency of viewing "sequels" is to expect a certain stylistic "rhyme" with the previous installment. Thus, those for whom the original "Kill Bill" was defined entirely in terms of the gravity-defying swordplay, blood-geysers and dark-slapstick The Bride encountered in the "Japanese genre-film" universe that wound up dominating much of Volume 1 and whom come to #2 expecting more of the same will set themselves up for a letdown: These final chapters move The Bride out of the "worlds" of the first film and into new ones, and thus entirely new styles of fighting, bloodshed and tone. There's simply no way these mid-and-final scenes (its really one movie, remember) could have topped the awesome carnage of The Bride's slaughter of O-Ren Ishii and The Crazy 88 in the "House of Blue Leaves" battle scene, so it heads in a different direction: The battles this time are more about strategy, motivation and pre-fight dialogue than they are about style. The "big" throwdown this time around is The Bride vs. Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), which does with brutality and claustrophobia what the "Blue Leaves" fight did with elegance and scope.
7.) Gordon Lui as the White Lotus Priest Pai Mei: Master of The Five-Finger Palm Exploding Heart Technique is going to be a big Halloween costume for grownups this year. You heard it here first.
8.) In case you're wondering, the only thing more fun than SAYING White Lotus Priest Pai Mei: Master of The Five-Finger Palm Exploding Heart Technique is WATCHING Pai Mei: Master of The Five-Finger Exploding Heart Technique. You really ought to see it.
I'm not the ONLY person reviewing this today, of course. Just for fun, here's a few links to some of the Web's more nifty and out-there offerings I found:
For exoticisms sake, here's Johnathan V. Last of conservative Washington periodical "The Weekly Standard" weighing in:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/966letfi.asp
John, I don't like to use the following phrase much, but... man, I'm sorry, you just don't get it.
D.K. Holm, who pens reviews under the banner "Nocturnal Admissions" for Moviepoopshoot.com, has been one of Kill Bill's #1 cheerleaders since the day the original came out. He has devoted over 15 mini-articles to it between then and now. His review, one of the most well-researched (and also spoilerish, you've been warned) is right here:
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/nocturnal/index.html
Speaking of missing the point by a mile and then some, here's some folks from a "Spirituality & Health" group of some kind, courtest Rottentomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1131502/reviews_viewer.php?fb=no&rid=1271994
Finally, Jeffery Wells will probably land himself BACK on the naughty-list of film geekdom with his "did we see the same movie!??" rundown at the start of his regular column:
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/elsewhere/index.html
Yeah, I know, I mostly posted negative reviews because I tend to find I learn more from people who disagree with me than those who agree. Even when those who disagree with me are as resoundingly WRONG as they are here :)
To make up, here's Rottentomatoes "positive list" of reviews, currently comprising an impressive 87% of their web-wide total:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/KillBillVol2-1131502/
Agree with me? Disagree? Lets here it in the "comments" section. That's what it's there for :)
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Comments
Is it just me, or was KiLL BiLL the film we were all waiting for after PULP? With his first two films, he showed his chops as a filmmaker, but the phenomenon of Quentin really hinged on his film-geekiness, and the expectation seemed to be that his follow-up would allow him to let his geek flag fly. That's it's taken him ten years to get to this point is a little disappointing, but on the other hand it was worth the wait. More importantly, it allowed for a kind of "re-discovery", to emphasize his awesomeness to the QT generation and reach a younger cabal of geeks besides.
But yeah, this movie's great, especially with both halves put together (remember during the first period of speculation about KiLL BiLL being split, and some people said volume two was going to be released about a month or so after volume one? That was awesome). With this film, Tarantino has done what many filmmakers have attempted in the past and which most (aside from DePalma at his wittiest and Guy Maddin at his loopiest) have failed at- to make a film largely out of his cinematic influences that feels less like a pastiche and more like the fever dream of a movie addict. That Quentin succeeds where so many have fallen can be traced largely to his ability to make the film, on top of everything else, deeply personal. To wit: Tarantino is the son of a single mother, and this knowledge leads me to believe that the Bride is his tribute to his own mom. Also, there's a line in volume 2 that describes Bill as having many surrogate fathers, and I equate this to the R.I.P. list in the credits to both volumes- Tarantino has been raised by his mother and by cinema, which would make Charles Bronson, Sergio Leone, Chang Cheh et al his own surrogate fathers.
Also Jeffrey Wells is a douchebag. Anyone who could think MAN ON FIRE and THE PUNISHER are both superior to volume 2 is pretty much wrong. I'm all for opinions and dissent, but this is ridiculous in my opinion.
The big issue with Thurman is that few filmmakers know how to use her properly. She lacks the delicacy that so many female (and more than a few male) stars today have, and her considerable presence comes largely through physical unavoidability and forcefulness. Tarantino seems to be one of the few who really seem to get her, and if she is to endure as a movie star she will have to be properly cast in roles that couldn't be offered to, say, Gwyneth Paltrow. That said, I'd love to see her stick around for years to come, rather than waiting for the Tarantino to cast her again and floundering in stuff like THE AVENGERS and THE GOLDEN BOWL in the interim. Too bad Aileen Wuornos has already been taken...
Well, that's enough for me, I s'pose. Adios, fellers.
PauL
opal-films.com
1. Best movie of the year so far? Yes. As you know, I viewed Vol 1 and Vol 2 back-to-back. The complete film is going to be tough to beat this year.
2. Would I go so far as to say Kill Bill is his best film? I'd be comfortable saying it is on par with Pulp Fiction. Before seeing Kill Bill, for me, the jury was still out on if Quentin had what it took to become "one of the greats". Res Dogs, for as much of a following as it has, was too self-consciously "cool" for me to call it a classic. And like many fans of Pulp, Jackie Brown's pacing and characterization left me cold. With Kill Bill, Tarantino has returned to what he does best: Visceral cinema with rich characters who are borrowed from the worlds of genre film often only respected and understood by geekdom. And this time, he didn't betray any of those genres...
3. If I had seen Vol 1 when it was first released, I'm positive that my opinion of Kill Bill would have been hurt by the long wait for the film-defining second half. What a poor and transparently greedy decision by all involved to split this up.
4. Thurman, Watts, Theron. Three blonde-bombshells who, I believe, have matured to a point where they outclass most everyone in their craft. Streep, watch your ass. This newblood is about to bury you alive.
5. I've hated everything Hannah has ever done... and now believe she deserves a supporting actress nod for the convincing edge she gave the character Elle. The fact that Tarantino got this performance out of her, proves his worth. And Carradine? What can I say... he'll win supporting actor next year, and the clip shown during the awards will be his Superman monologue.
6. The trailer fight was probably the most brutal, realistic, and hilarious confrontation in the entire epic. It takes incredible skill to have an audience screaming in horror, bellowing laughter, sucking air in over their teeth, and cheering -- all within a minute of screen time.
7. Why wait until Halloween? ::strokes beard::
8. Point me to a DVD.
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