KILL BILL, VOL. 2 (2004)  ***

Reviewed 4/17/04

The good news is that this time there’s actually a story with intriguing complications. The cinematic homages are better woven into the plot. David Carradine and Michael Madsen give perhaps their best performances ever. The scenes with Bill (Carradine) and Budd (Madsen) provide the characters a recognizable humanity absent from the first film. The bad news is that there are several longueurs – the seen-it-a-million-times Pai Mai (Gordon Liu) training sessions, a conversation with a Mexican pimp who speaks like he has molasses in his mouth, and the long, awaited confrontation with Bill has Tarantino clumsily drawing out a tedious analogy between the Bride (Uma Thurman) and Superman. Tarantino doesn’t quite pin down the tone between spoof, homage, and serious story, but it works well enough because of the highlights. These well-dramatized set pieces include the Bride’s meeting with Bill at the wedding rehearsal, Budd and Elle doing business, the Bride’s fight with Elle, and finally, Bride with daughter B.B. and SHOGUN ASSASSIN. It’s quite apparent now that dividing KILL BILL in two was an aesthetic mistake, allowing Tarantino too much indulgence – excessive violence for violence sake in the first one and long, awkward conversations that could be trimmed way down in this one.