Review From Rotten Tomatoes
By John Anderson
Honeymoon killer: Having dispatched most of her would-be assassins, The Bride now gets to throw the razor-studded bouquet. Electrifying, in its rhythms and tension and its sense of cinema. With Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu. Written and directed by Quentin Taran.tino. 2:20 (gore, violence, vulgarity, adult content, live burial). At area theaters.You learn a few things from "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," the second half of Quentin Tarantino's ultra-violent revenge thriller and a film of stunning virtuosity and emotional clout. For one thing, did you know that if you close your eyes, Michael Madsen sounds exactly like Nick Nolte? More significantly, "Kill Bill" was never going to be one movie, no matter what Miramax or Tarantino claimed last year. And most interestingly, it seems that when a two-part movie does arrive, even as fraternal twins, one sibling can make the other look even better than it did on its own.
For all its balletic butchery and virtuoso Hong Kong-inspired choreography, "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" seemed a less-than-substantial piece of work from a director as lauded as Tarantino. (The film was heralded in its own credits as "The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino ... ." as if we should be grateful.) But in light of "Vol. 2," the first "Kill Bill" takes on a grandeur it initially lacked. The second film makes the first one better -- this despite the fact that the two movies together reverse the standard one-two combination of traditional melodrama; the real orgy of violence was concluded before the heart of the story had been established.
Yet the technique works remarkably well. Much of this success has to do with what we already know. In "Vol. 2," when Uma Thurman's Bride is visited at her wedding rehearsal by Bill (David Carradine, every crag in his face a monument in John Ford-inspired black and white), the terror is palpable. We know, and she doesn't, that the happy afternoon is going to end in slaughter. But they speak and they speak (it's a daring move to start what is ostensibly an action movie with 15 minutes of dialogue), but we're drawn into the rhythm because we know where it's going, and that it won't be going well.This is all flashback, as is the terrific episode in which The Bride -- OK, she has a real name, Beatrix Kiddo -- is trained in kung fu by the imperious Pai Mei (the wonderful Gordon Liu).
Thurman and her nemesis, played by Daryl Hannah, also have a brutal, gloriously violent battle, which ends with perhaps the grossest thing Tarantino has ever committed to film. Madsen, playing the aptly named Budd, thinks he's taken care of the Beatrix problem for his brother by burying her alive. But even this does not deter Beatrix from her mission to Kill Bill.It's a powerhouse movie, one that draws on a variety of cinematic tropes for its look and feel and perhaps the co-opted muscle of certain borrowed sources -- a Tarantino film wouldn't be one without at least some of his encyclopedic video-geekiness finding its way onto the screen. But at the same time, "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" feels totally original. It validates the other half of the story. And it may even prove that Quentin Tarantino is as good a director as he has so long been purported to be.
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/ny-killbill2-movie,0,5136424.story?coll=ny-movies-bigpix
Honeymoon killer: Having dispatched most of her would-be assassins, The Bride now gets to throw the razor-studded bouquet. Electrifying, in its rhythms and tension and its sense of cinema. With Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Gordon Liu. Written and directed by Quentin Taran.tino. 2:20 (gore, violence, vulgarity, adult content, live burial). At area theaters.You learn a few things from "Kill Bill: Vol. 2," the second half of Quentin Tarantino's ultra-violent revenge thriller and a film of stunning virtuosity and emotional clout. For one thing, did you know that if you close your eyes, Michael Madsen sounds exactly like Nick Nolte? More significantly, "Kill Bill" was never going to be one movie, no matter what Miramax or Tarantino claimed last year. And most interestingly, it seems that when a two-part movie does arrive, even as fraternal twins, one sibling can make the other look even better than it did on its own.
For all its balletic butchery and virtuoso Hong Kong-inspired choreography, "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" seemed a less-than-substantial piece of work from a director as lauded as Tarantino. (The film was heralded in its own credits as "The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino ... ." as if we should be grateful.) But in light of "Vol. 2," the first "Kill Bill" takes on a grandeur it initially lacked. The second film makes the first one better -- this despite the fact that the two movies together reverse the standard one-two combination of traditional melodrama; the real orgy of violence was concluded before the heart of the story had been established.
Yet the technique works remarkably well. Much of this success has to do with what we already know. In "Vol. 2," when Uma Thurman's Bride is visited at her wedding rehearsal by Bill (David Carradine, every crag in his face a monument in John Ford-inspired black and white), the terror is palpable. We know, and she doesn't, that the happy afternoon is going to end in slaughter. But they speak and they speak (it's a daring move to start what is ostensibly an action movie with 15 minutes of dialogue), but we're drawn into the rhythm because we know where it's going, and that it won't be going well.This is all flashback, as is the terrific episode in which The Bride -- OK, she has a real name, Beatrix Kiddo -- is trained in kung fu by the imperious Pai Mei (the wonderful Gordon Liu).
Thurman and her nemesis, played by Daryl Hannah, also have a brutal, gloriously violent battle, which ends with perhaps the grossest thing Tarantino has ever committed to film. Madsen, playing the aptly named Budd, thinks he's taken care of the Beatrix problem for his brother by burying her alive. But even this does not deter Beatrix from her mission to Kill Bill.It's a powerhouse movie, one that draws on a variety of cinematic tropes for its look and feel and perhaps the co-opted muscle of certain borrowed sources -- a Tarantino film wouldn't be one without at least some of his encyclopedic video-geekiness finding its way onto the screen. But at the same time, "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" feels totally original. It validates the other half of the story. And it may even prove that Quentin Tarantino is as good a director as he has so long been purported to be.
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/ny-killbill2-movie,0,5136424.story?coll=ny-movies-bigpix
posted by Kill Bill Volume Two at 10.9.06
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