The first half of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”
was an action fever dream with moments of disproportionate
intensity worthy of Michael Powell or Brian De Palma. In “Vol.2,”
the tempo slows down but the characters deepen and expand
as the saga comes to an end. The film should really be seen
as a whole – the second half plays soaring spirit to
the first’s throbbing flesh, and together they are a
staggering achievement.
When last seen, The Bride (Uma Thurman) had just finished
flooring an entire brigade of Japanese masked warriors, as
part of her seething search for the treacherous Bill (David
Carradine). “Vol. 2” takes the avenger (finally
baptized as Beatrix Kiddo) to the vast deserts of Texas and
lush Mexican backwaters, where showdowns with Bill’s
bloated but cunning brother, Budd (Michael Madsen), and deadly
hit-woman Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) await her before the
final rendezvous with Bill.
Viewers expecting the single-minded push forward of the first
film may be driven crazy by “Vol. 2’s” leisurely
bull sessions and plot digressions – though there is
a stunning duel between The Bride and Elle, the action here
(a shotgun blast to the chest, a snake attack) is for the
most part like terse punctuation to a galvanizing stillness.
But then again, for all their visceral power, Tarantino’s
films have never been the kind of nonstop actionfests that
studios churn out to audiences every week of the year. For
the first volume, it’s almost as if Tarantino were proving
that he could “do” action if he wanted to.
“Vol. 2” clarifies his strategies, and the greatness
of the films comes to the fore. If in “Vol. 1”
he raises his characters to the level of mythical movie lore,
here he twists them to show flesh and blood. Tarantino’s
grand theme may be the distance between how the people of
his movies see themselves as “characters” and
their yearning, deep down, for the fullness of reality –
despite the barrage of stylized effects (rear projection,
references to everything from John Ford to kung-fu headbusters),
the emotions scuttling underneath the surface are raw and
as vibrant as Tarantino’s zest for filmmaking.
As usual, Tarantino offers his actors unrushed arias to chew
on, and Carradine, Hannah, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks, Larry
Bishop and Bo Svenson savor them to the hilt. But ultimately
the movie could have been titled “And God Created Uma.”
Not since the 1930s, when Josef Von Sternberg’s lenses
searched for the mysteries of the universe in the features
of Marlene Dietrich, has a director so exalted his leading
lady. Whether crawling her way out of a freshly dug grave
or cuddling with her newfound daughter, Thurman is elevated
to goddess status only to be brought down to earth in the
sublime finale.
Easily the best film of the year so far, with Bertolucci’s
“The Dreamers” the only serious competition. With
the two halves finally brought together, “Kill Bill”
will undoubtedly arise as one of the richest achievements
in recent American cinema.
