Kill Bill Vol. 2
R, 126 min.
Now playing at area theaters
Arguing with some friends last year about Kill Bill Vol. 1, I insisted that Quentin Tarantino's decision to cut his movie in two wasn't fatal, because the first movie had more allure as a genre piece packed with hazy implications. Who needs disappointing finality when you can fill in the story and character gaps yourself? Then I watched Kill Bill Vol. 2, and after a lengthy opening conversation between Uma Thurman's "The Bride" and David Carradine's Bill—one that may have more words than the entirety of Vol. 1—Michael Madsen shows up, bringing with him everything that was missing from the first Kill Bill. At the same time, though, he brings a reminder of what the second one will never be.
Madsen plays Bill’s brother Budd, now living in a trailer in the desert and working as a strip-club bouncer. His boss is a hard-ass who snaps at him when he comes into work. “I don’t know what car wash you worked in that let you come in 20 minutes late,” the boss snarls, “but it wasn’t mine, and I own a car wash." That line—along with the sloppy way that Madsen mixes margaritas, and the way the rare spark of light keeps dimming in his dark, dead eyes—has all the Tarantino soul that fans had to supply themselves for the previous Kill Bill. Not even Vernita Green's box of Kaboom or the leisurely linguistics conversation with Sonny Chiba can match the look on Madsen's face when he's told that he's going to have to mop up shitty water in a women's bathroom.
Where the first half of Kill Bill hinted at being about the cruel responsibility of revenge—when it wasn't about Tarantino's desire to live inside the action sequences of a drive-in movie—the second half is much plainer about the tension between needing to do a dirty job and wanting to ditch that job to go hang out with friends. There are a couple of magnificent action sequences in Vol. 2—particularly the honey with Daryl Hannah's one-eyed Elle Driver—but on the whole, the picture gets talkier and talkier until it finally culminates in a one-act play, as Bill explains to The Bride why killers can't just decide to stop killing. It's the inverse of Jules' speech in Pulp Fiction, and the fact that it's delivered in Carradine's musical growl makes it just about the sexiest 20-minute talking-head sequence in cinema history.
But it's one thing to sneak in some soul and casual chat at the end of a long, bloody grindhouse feature. It's quite another to cap a dialogue-heavy movie with a big speech. While Kill Bill Vol. 1 felt satisfying enough all on its own, Vol. 2 feels strangely truncated. Like Matrix Revolutions, it's more climax than final act.
That is, of course, unless you watch your Vol. 1 DVD before driving to the multiplex. Then the second movie might feel like a rich conclusion. But as exciting as it's been as a filmgoer to have the fun and anticipation of two Tarantinos in less than a year, it's really no way to run a railroad. Now fans have a new date to circle: whenever the final, ultimate DVD edition is due, in a package that we hope will stanch some of the bleeding from surgery that now seems more obviously crude.
I'll say this, though: The way Tarantino completes his puzzle is better than what I would've imagined. For one thing, Tarantino still draws plenty of lines that trail off the screen—like the nature of Bill's assassination squad, and how they broke up—so pulp-addled viewers like myself can do some heavy backstory-lifting if we want to. More to the point, Tarantino has packed Kill Bill Vol. 2 with references and environments that have a deeply personal and meaningful feel, from the Ennio Morricone music cues to the glimpses of Johnny Guitar on Bill's TV to the alternately repulsive and homey touches in Budd's cruddy trailer and Bill's well-appointed Mexican manse (which both look like spaces where Tarantino might've lived).
And as always, Tarantino puts the viewer exactly where we don't think we want to be (although we desperately, desperately do), and after beating us up, he sticks us with a series of monologues about secret identities and things that can't be undone. They're just enough to make us think that the very title of his movie might be tragic.
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