Welcome back to the QTE folks. Yes it's been a long fucking time. Sorry about that. Guild rule #1 and all. Let us review: I surprisingly enjoyed and liked Kill Bill Vol 1. So I must've liked the 2nd one right?
The truth is? I haven't figured it out yet. Let's see if talking through it helps me reach a decision.
As always: SPOILERS. Bitch and I'll use the 5 step heart explosion technique on you.
We start with The Bride in a car suddenly narrating the events of vol. 1 to us. Alright I would imagine most people seeing Vol. 2 would have seen the first but sure, maybe people have bad memories. The dialogue is actually already crisp and clean and makes me wonder why everyone says QT's seminal-script work is Pulp Fiction when the delivery in this one is phenomenal from almost everyone.
We get a little more insight into the wedding and how the "massacre" happened. While the conversation between the Bride and Bill is oddly fascinating, the rest of the scene doesn't do it for me. Look its Motherfuckin Samuel L Jackson for 10 seconds! I kind of wish he had been one of the assassination squad members. I just never felt the Liu, Fox, Madsen, Hannah lineup was that threatening. As long as Jackson doesn't have that goatee and wig from Jackie Brown, he's the most threatening guy in this.
Anyway, we see the start of the massacre and now it's time to after Budd. Budd leads a pretty miserable life since the gang went their separate ways. He even pawned his Hanzo sword for 250 bucks. He comes home pissed off one night after a fight with his sleazy boss and Kiddo (Oh did i reveal The Bride's name as Beatrix Kiddo?) is waiting under his trailer. After all this prep, all the guys she killed in Japan, the fight with Copperhead, there's no way Budd's not completely fucked right?
Budd uses Shotgun to the torso! It's not very effective. Why do I say this even though it stuns the Bride long enough for our next sequence? At that range..shouldn't a shotgun have a put a gigantic fucking hole through her rather than just knocking her on her ass. Sigh. What are you doing QT? The first one while it didn't make sense actually was justifiable. This is getting bad fast. At least the scenery around Budd's trailer is still fucking beautiful.
Moving on, Budd then somehow decides let's bury the bitch alive. This leads to the best sequence in either volume. The Bride training under Bill's sensei Pai Mei. Pai Mei is a karate master, shunned by most because he is unafraid to kill. He's so unafraid to kill, he's invented the 5 step heart explostion palm technique. Also, the eyebrows.
He's also laughing at your feeble attempt to masturbate
The training scenes are so over the top ridiculous they're fantastic. Pai Mei constantly berates The Bride while stroking his beard as if his life depended on it. Brutal, mysoginistic, and a total asshole Pai Mei deserved more screen time than everyone but the Bride and Bill combined. If you watch nothing else, you should watch the Pai Mei scenes for the delightful insanity.
Using Pai Mei's training, the Bride manages to bust out of her coffin and in an excellent zombie-movie inspired shot pulls out of her own grave. We cut back to Budd.
For some reason, Budd made the bright decision to trust Elle (another member of the squad) in an attempt to sell the Brides Hanzo sword. Look, if you were in a team of brutal killers, would you trust them whatsoever? Yeah I wouldn't either. But Budd does and of course Elle in an awful twist of irony releases a black mamba that bites Budd about 60 times. She then proceeds to monologue because in this situation who wouldn't? This gives the Bride time to show up and get in a decent fight with Elle. She finds Budd hadnt really pawned his Hanzo sword and takes it. Why she didn't just take her old one I'm not sure. Anyway, we learn that Elle also trained under Pai Mei and lost an eye when she called him a stupid old man. She retaliated years later and as Pai Mei dies, I was so certain there would be one last beard stroke with a witty, cutting, sexist remark. There wasn't. Missed opportunity there.
So we get to the fight and The Bride pops out Elle's other eye. Just to share: remember QT's thing about feet?
Mmm Sexy.
Only one motherfucker left. Bill. We track him down through an old Mexican pimp (another great side character that I want more story on. Come on QT! Fuck the main storyline. This is when you can go off on a tangent!) and show up at his house, stalking. Remember how the Bride was pregnant? Time to bring it around!
Insert Dead Baby Joke here.
So Bill in a pure act of assholishness has protected himself but leaving their daughter alive. I can't believe I'm saying this but Carradine is fantastic here. He tells "the story of mommy and daddy" to his daughter in such a sweet endearing way, but you can hear all the venom and masochism underneath. This goes on for awhile until finally Bill and Kiddo have some time alone. He shoots her with a truth serum in the kneecap..
Um what?
While the actor's deliver it well and there's some great evil monologuing here (2 in one movie! Sweet!), this entire sequence drags for me. The movie is called Kill Bill. We're delaying the inevitable while Carradine rambles about comic books (which really had almost nothing to do with the context of anything). Eventually, the two fight. In 30 seconds, the Bride pulls the heart explosion technique. Bill gets up, takes 5 steps, and dies.
The Bride and her daughter ride off into the sunset....
Huh? It's over already? It took 2 movies for a 30 second fight? Everything ends relatively happily?
I know you have to turn your brain off for these movies but it's hard. You're telling me through all this the Bride sustained no long-term injuries? That after a body count of 45, possibly 46, and maiming of several others there's not a single cop or law enforcement agency looking for her? I know she was an assassin before and got away with it but how? Do they pay people off? She doesn't use a fake name often if at all. How did Elle get the drop on Pai Mei? How did Budd get the Bride with a shotgun but not expect betrayal of Elle? Did the black mamba get Elle or not?
Another issue I had is these movies are supposed to technically be one film. If so its completely incoherent. As separate films I get it. The killing spree vengeance had an anime feel while the final showdown/standoff had to have a more Western feel. If I watched these back to back, the first half and the second half would clash really badly. The music in the 2nd half was more atmospheric than campy fun. The scenery while beautiful didn't give as many memorable shots. The dialogue is really the only thing that "popped" in the 2nd movie for me (outside of the Pai Mei scenes of course). Hm.
Is it possible to dislike a movie but not what it did at the same time? That's my stance here. I didn't enjoy Volume 2 nearly as much as I did Volume 1. But that didn't make it not a "fitting" ending to the story. For an ending, I enjoyed it. But the different atmosphere and change to a more serious tone made me lose my ability to just enjoy the stupidity. The actors definitely give some good performances and there's bits and lines throughout worth seeing at least once, but Volume 2 has actually set me back a step. I was so prepared to love volume 2, being careful because after all it was still a QT movie, and it just fell a little short for me. Consider this one a tie.
Current Score:
QT-2(RD, KBv1) Neutral-1 (Kbv2) Oz- 2 (PF, JB)
Next time on the QTE: Death Proof, which I kinda walked out on. Yay!
-Oz
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