The plot thickens. Kill Bill: Volume 2 continues the story of which the overture was the first part. The bride (Uma Thurman) is on revenge tour against Bill and his colleagues, who have beaten her into a coma. The second part doesn’t quite keep up with the first part when it comes to visual aesthetics (although it’s still stylistically packed), but it’s a bit richer in content. Thurman’s character gets fleshed out a bit and we get to know the background story of the original attack on her. Overall, the amount of action is clearly reduced in favor of dialogues. Some of the side characters don’t provide enough to justify the time spent on them. Since Volume 2 contains the ending and thus closes the story arc without missing much of the beginning, this part can more easily stand by itself. What’s annoying, though, is that with all the strengths that both parts have, ONE really good movie could have come out of it. Tarantino claims that Kill Bill is his most personal movie. One can only assume that this is a case of an artist who is too close to his material and doesn’t want to part with anything. I would assume that you could have found a better one-film solution with a stricter editor, a general tightening of both parts and one or the other left out or shortened scene.
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Uma Thurman, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine
Genre: Action
Rated: R
Runtime: 136 min.
Release Date: 2004/04/16
Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino
Editor: Sally Menke
Cinematography: Robert Richardson
Budget: $30 million