Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

[8]

Writer/director Quentin Tarantino wraps up his cartoonish revenge tale with all the returning cast and crew. Vol. 2 is less visceral and more character-oriented than Vol. 1, taking us back to the fateful day when the eponymous Bill ordered his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad to murder Uma Thurman’s ‘Bride’ character and everyone else at her wedding rehearsal. It also features Thurman’s battles with the three remaining targets on her kill list. Michael Madsen’s and Daryl Hannah’s characters are dispatched in a long sequence centered around Madsen’s desert mobile home. After that, Thurman finally locates and confronts her ex-boss and ex-lover Bill, played by David Carradine.

Vol. 2 is slightly more uneven for me than Vol. 1, but still very enjoyable overall. It contains the least interesting section of either movie, when Thurman trains with a martial arts master named Pai Mei (Gordon Liu) who is as cruel as he is silly. The character doesn’t really work for me. But the film also contains some of the story’s most compelling moments, including substantive exchanges between Thurman and Carradine both prior to the massacre, and during their final confrontation. There is no rival to the balls-out action of Vol. 1‘s ‘House of Blue Leaves’ climax, but Daryl Hannah comes close. She gets to deliver on the bad-assery promised by her scant screen-time in Vol. 1. The always-wonderful Michael Parks also makes a memorable cameo near the end.

With Vivica A. Fox and Lucy Liu.