KILL BILL, VOL. 2 - DVD review

"I overreacted." --Bill

In "Kill Bill: Volume 2" a black-and-white prologue reminds the viewer that in Volume 1 a team of assassins gunned down a pregnant bride and her guests at a wedding rehearsal in a small chapel in the New México desert. Only the Bride survived, and she vowed revenge. When in "Kill Bill 2" she finally reaches Bill, her ex-lover and the leader of the assassin team, Bill explains his motives for the attack by using the aforementioned understatement. It's an example of the subtlety and restraint writer-director Quentin Tarantino exercises in the story's second installment, ingredients sorely missing from the first volume.

Readers who remember my reaction to "Kill Bill 1" will recall that I was much more impressed with Tarantino's visual style than with anything his film had to say, which was very little, indeed. When it came to blood, I said, Mr. Poe had nothing on this director, his first "Kill Bill" movie being drenched in the stuff.

This time, however, the director has moderated the blood output and replaced it with more dialogue and character development. As Tarantino says in the accompanying documentary, "Volume 1 is the questions; Volume 2 is the answers." With less constant, and therefore less tiring, physical activity and more emphasis on story, "Kill Bill 2" is the better movie. And, happily, it doesn't require that you have seen "Kill Bill 1" in order to appreciate "Kill Bill 2." Volume 2 is a self-contained unit, with only a short explanatory note needed at the beginning. Which may say something about the first volume, incidentally, that it can be summed up in a brief moment.

As I pointed out the first time around, "Kill Bill" was initially to have been one motion picture, but Tarantino was prevailed upon to turn it into two parts when it appeared the project would be unduly long for a single sitting. In my opinion, it would have benefitted from being a single film, but this second installment is practically the film I longed for in the first place. Volume 1 seemed far too much devoted to bloodshed for bloodshed's sake, but Volume 2 rectifies the situation with more heart and greater soul. It shows us what Tarantino can do when he isn't trying simply to be supercool.

Not that "Kill Bill 2" isn't still filled with plenty of old-fashioned action and bloodshed. Tarantino continues to pay tribute to the Hong Kong fighting flicks he loves so well; the Japanese anime, samurai, and yakuza gangster films; and the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. Just to a lesser degree. And he still captures the martial-arts movements of his fight scenes with a combination of poetic grace and extravagant brutality. But this time there isn't as much combat. Put another way: The violence in "Kill Bill 2" is less extensive but more impassioned. Consequently, I was not fatigued by it as I was in Volume 1, and it made a more positive, memorable impact on me. It's perhaps a matter of there being too much of a good thing in Volume 1. A little violence done well is better than a lot of violence done only adequately. Note the few shocking scenes in "Psycho" as the best example. They amount to only a few minutes of the total movie, yet they live with the viewer forever.

Tarantino used violence in "Kill Bill 1" partly as homage and partly as spoof, to titillate, amuse, and arouse our senses, but after a while the violence became excessive and numbing. With "Kill Bill 2" there are only a handful of truly violent scenes, and they come off much better for the director keeping them in reserve.

Anyway, Tarantino's remarkable visual style carries the day in "Kill Bill 2," fused with actual feelings above and beyond a mere revenge plot. Tarantino continues to pull out all the stops, using every cinematic device at his disposal: Again we have the De Palma split screens, the eccentric Hitchcockian camera angles, the MTV quick cuts, the mix of black-and-white and color photography, and so forth. You name it and it's there, most of it used effectively, as always, to create a vivid personal statement.

So, you need a word about the plot? A woman is almost killed in a dastardly shooting and lives to get even. That's about it. Uma Thurman stars as the lady known alternatively as the Bride, the "Black Mamba," Beatrix Kiddo, and Mommy, who four years earlier was attacked and left for dead on her wedding day, the victim of a group known as the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, of which the Bride was once a member. But she survived in a coma, and when she recovered she vowed vengeance upon all those who assaulted her and killed her loved ones.

In Volume 1 the Bride dispatched her first two rivals, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). In Volume 2 she goes after Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill's brother, code-named "Sidewinder"; Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), code-named "California Mountain Snake"; and Bill himself (David Carradine), code-named "Snake Charmer." But gone are the blood-soaked forays into armies of opponents, the heroine killing them all with a single sword stroke.

Ms. Thurman has more opportunities to show off her acting skills this time around, too. Of course, she portrays her character as tough and resolute and resilient and athletic and all, but in several scenes she shows a remarkable sense of dramatic timing in her speeches as well, and in a flashback to her younger days she radiates a convincing schoolgirl innocence.

As outstanding as Thurman is, however, this is David Carradine's movie. In Volume 1 he was hardly seen; in Volume 2 he is the center of attention. And what a center he is. He dominates the proceedings as few actors can. Villain or no, or maybe because of it, his presence is always felt, even when he's not on the screen. When he is in a frame, it's difficult even for Ms. Thurman to keep up.

I always like Michael Madsen, and in Volume 2 he plays the most sympathetic character in the story, and plays it notably well. His character is resigned to the Bride's coming to get him, but it doesn't mean he's not prepared. Daryl Hannah hasn't much of a chance to show her thespian abilities in the film and was more probably chosen for the part because of her resemblance to Ms. Thurman, a kind of mirror image of the starring actress. Additionally, two actors from Volume 1 are brought back for different roles in Volume 2, also acting as bookends or mirrors. Gordon Liu, who played Johnny Mo the first time around, here plays Pei Mei, the Bride's venerable kung-fu master, a weird-looking old gent who's practically superhuman. More important, and somewhat unexpectedly, is Michael Parks, who played Sheriff Earl McGraw in Volume 1, here playing Estabon Vihaio, an elderly cavalier and friend of Bill, who enjoys one of the quietest yet most tension-filled scenes in the movie. Also look for a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson as an organist at the wedding chapel. You'll recognize him by his voice.

Viewers will have their own favorite scenes, but for me four segments stand out among many good ones (and a couple of empty fillers). The scene I cited before with Vihaio is suspenseful. A sequence about being buried alive is truly terrifying and involves another reference to Poe ("The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Premature Burial"). The Bride's fight-to-the-finish with Elle Drive is about as thrilling a battle as you'll find in any movie, capped by a resolution you'll not soon forget. And the Bride's climactic confrontation with Bill will come as both a surprise and a relief.

Without a doubt, "Kill Bill 2" is over the top, but not so excessively over the top as "Kill Bill 1." There continue to be things in Volume 2 that are so outlandish as to make one smile, things like "the five-point palm exploding heart technique"; or a split screen showing two people kicking each other simultaneously; or what has to be one of the longest sets of closing-credits in the history of motion pictures, with a touch of noir thrown in. Yet almost everything in the picture works. I had fun with it.

Video:
The movie is again presented in an anamorphic widescreen ratio measuring approximately 2.15:1 across a normal television. When the color kicks in after the black-and-white prologue, it's like a sudden meteor flash, almost blinding in its brilliance. However, once accustomed to the colors, you may find them not exactly natural but too bright for reality. Still, this is not meant to be a realistic story but a comic-book adventure, so the colors do their job. The screen is free of grain, halos, shimmering lines, or other digital artifacts. Definition is fine, as is inner detail, so I'd say the DVD transfer is about as successful as it can be.

Audio:
The audio is again available in either Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS 5.1 Surround. In DD 5.1 the sound displays some productive rear-channel effects, especially evident in the burial scene, and a fair amount of front-channel stereo spread. The deepest bass could be stronger, but the mid bass vibrates the room, and the transient impact is quite impressive. Audio fans will not be disappointed.

Extras:
As with the first volume, there aren't a lot of extras on "Kill Bill 2." The primary bonus is a twenty-six-minute documentary, "The Making of Kill Bill: Volume Two," with comments from the director, producer, and stars. Then, there is an eleven-minute music video, a "Chingon" performance made live at the première of "Kill Bill 2." Finally, there are nineteen chapter selections and a three-minute deleted scene. I particularly liked the deleted scene, and while I think the film is already too long, I wished Tarantino had replaced something else with it. Oh, well. The spoken language options are English and French, with subtitles in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, plus English captions for the hearing impaired.

As I said in my previous review, I would not discount the possibility of Miramax/Buena Vista issuing a two or three-disc special edition with more bells and whistles sometime in the future. We'll have to wait and see.

Parting Thoughts:
I recognize that many readers will vehemently disagree with this next suggestion, but I couldn't help thinking after watching "Kill Bill 1 and 2" that this pair of good-to-very-good two-hour movies could be combined and edited into one terrific three-hour movie. Whether such a thing happens is another wait-and-see. In the meantime, I liked "Kill Bill 2" better than its predecessor, and even people who haven't seen the first film should enjoy the second. Tarantino still hasn't a lot to say in "Kill Bill 2," but he says it with such high style, you have to sit up and take notice.