Kill Bill: Volume 2

This second installment of Quentin Tarantino’s stunning revenge epic proves that sitting through 4 hours of Uma Thurman kicking ass would’ve been no problem at all. Equally as good as its first half, although markedly different, Vol. 2 is less violent, fleshing out the Bride’s (Thurman) relationship with her would-be murderer and assassination target, Bill (David Carradine, who has a much bigger role than in Vol. 1). This is not to say that Vol. 2 skimps on action because there is plenty to enjoy on that front. Thurman’s showdown with Darryl Hannah inside a trailer is great fun, and semi-reminiscent of John Goodman’s tango with Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona. Tarantino also does a mini tribute to the buried-alive sequence in The Vanishing, and to B-movie Samurai films, wherein the Bride is trained by a white-haired master (a hilarious Gordon Liu) with a tendency for poking people’s eyes out when they irritate him. A flashback to the Bride’s wedding day, where Bill actually made an appearance before the massacre commenced, qualifies as one of the better dialogue scenes in Tarantino’s repertoire. I know Tarantino has other films in mind, but I’m hoping that somehow, someway, Thurman could take to the screen again as this character in the future. The Bride deserves 10 films, not just two.