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Review: “˜Kill Bill Vol. 2′ softens carnage without sacrificing director’s trademark style

By Sommer Mathis

April 14, 2004 9:00 p.m.

While many critics bemoaned Miramax’s decision to release
“Kill Bill” in two installments as a ploy to force
moviegoers to pay twice for the same film, it turns out that
“Kill Bill Vol. 2″ actually does have a tone and style
that are distinctly different from those of the first film, even
though the story it continues is the same.

For one thing, while Quentin Tarantino has certainly included
plenty of thrilling action and fight scenes, there is a marked lack
of the same kind of multiple-victim blood baths that characterized
“Vol. 1.” The Bride leaves a little less carnage in her
wake this time around, having only three targets left on her hit
list: the title character (a brilliantly cast David Carradine), his
brother Budd (Michael Madsen) and the maniacal Elle Driver (an
unnaturally full-lipped Daryl Hannah).

On an emotional level, “Vol. 2″ also distinguishes
itself from its predecessor by actually, well, having one. Where
“Vol. 1″ gave us a cold-blooded killer on a linear path
of revenge, “Vol. 2″ lets us into the inner world of
Uma Thurman’s assassin, finally revealing not only the
character’s name but also her real relationships to her
victims and how those ties create certain weaknesses with which she
clearly struggles. If The Bride felt like a little less than an
actual person in the first part, she certainly makes up for it in
this one.

All this is not to suggest that Tarantino has completely
abandoned his trademark banter or let go of the passion for paying
homage to his film influences that permeated the first release.

One lengthy but brilliant sequence takes The Bride back to the
misty mountains of rural China where she was under the tutelage of
martial arts master Pei Mai. Not only has Tarantino cast kung fu
legend Gordon Liu in the part, but the entire episode, from the
beat-heavy 1970s music to the tandem, silhouetted workout scenes,
displays the director’s reverence for classic Shaolin films
such as “Fists and Guts” or “The Master
Killer.”

But Tarantino’s genius has always shown in his ability to
see the inherent humor within the genres he admires, and
fortunately, the chapter titled “The Cruel Tutelage of Pei
Mai” is no exception. Pei Mai himself is constantly flipping
his long, slender white beard through his fingers for emphasis and
saying things (in Cantonese of course, with subtitles) to
Thurman’s character like “Your anger amuses me.”
It’s classic kung fu, but it’s classic Tarantino at the
same time.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this deeply satisfying
and highly entertaining conclusion to the “Kill Bill”
saga is how openly sentimental it feels. The Bride’s real
motives, once they are finally revealed, seem awfully suburban for
a Tarantino film, let alone one that spends so much time dealing
with topics such as death and revenge in such an unblinking manner.
And where she ends up by the movie’s finish feels so normal
as to force one to wonder whether the overpowering bloodshed that
has occurred could be associated with the same woman we see
now.

In fact, this seems to be Tarantino’s message precisely:
even trained killers have souls and they want the same thing we all
want. Isn’t that sweet.

-Sommer Mathis

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