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In Volume 2 of Kill Bill, the title character (David
Carradine) remarks, "You know I’m all about old-school." The same could be
said for Quentin Tarantino, but which school? In this film, kung fu movies, samurai dramas
and Japanese cartoons all get to bask in the sunny glow of Tarantino’s homage,
alongside the Kung
Fu TV series and Sergio
Leone’s westerns. Tarantino works hard to give generous screen time to each of
his favorite sources of inspiration, perhaps taking his cue from an Asian pulp author
named Mao Zedong, who said to "let a thousand beautiful flowers bloom." The
writer/director’s reluctance to discriminate among styles proves a
drawback—decades of tributes, rip-offs and parodies have emptied spaghetti westerns
of their value as pastiche material, and while the same isn’t true for anime,
that’s still no reason to have it in the movie. Even so, Kill Bill (the
combined two volumes) is one of the best films of recent years.
In Volume 2, the Bride (Uma Thurman) continues her revenge mission
against Bill and her other former colleagues in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad
(DiVAS), seeking payback for their violent objection to her wedding. Thurman is equal to
the film’s many physical challenges and she makes the Bride a believable killing
machine—or as believable as necessary in a film that self-consciously inhabits a
physics-defying movie universe. She also makes the most of the scenes where the Bride is
thwarted; her skillful depictions of anguish humanize the character and bring the audience
into her struggle, just in time for her savage counterattacks.
In a film like this one, the references also take on a starring role,
and while Kill Bill’s tired wild-west homages clang loudly, they never manage
to slow the momentum. Tarantino’s fascination with kung fu films pays off better than
his other cinematic passions because those movies offer more variety than other action
genres. There are only so many ways you can shoot someone, but kung fu flicks have a
wealth of weapons and hand-to-hand combat moves, not to mention exotic tricks like
"the nine strikes" and "the cosmic palm." Tarantino exploits the
genre’s advantages in sequences that dazzle in their own right, but have an extra pop
for Hong Kong film fans.
In Volume 1, when the Bride took on O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) and her army
of bodyguards, the scene contained many sly tributes to Blood
of the Dragon and The Master
of the Flying Guillotine, two classics featuring the under-appreciated Jimmy Wang
Yu. But the set piece also worked because of its sharp choreography and the arresting,
bloody tableau it created in the spacious nightclub. Likewise, in Volume 2, Gordon Liu
excels as Bill’s master in a flashback showing the Bride’s training. Liu
achieves nice interaction with Thurman while bits of kung fu esoterica mix with the funk
soundtrack.
Volume 2 upends expectations in humorous ways, but it also offers more
of what audiences anticipate from a Tarantino movie. There are weird verbal tangents and
monologues that extract meaning from unpromising-looking slabs of pop culture. Also, the
film’s interjection of elements of domestic life into the violent realm occupied by
the characters makes for comedy on the order of some of the best scenes in Pulp
Fiction. Perhaps the funniest moment in Kill Bill is a flashback in
which Thurman's character has to deal with the demands of her job right after
finding out that she's pregnant. Tarantino went for a similar effect in Volume 1’s
Pasadena living room battle, but the colliding worlds make a more impressive crash in this
installment.
Thurman will rightly win a lot of praise for her performance, but
it’s Carradine who runs away with the movie. Bill is the answer to critics who say
that Tarantino is merely a clever arranger of film references. The gang boss is in part an
evil Kwai Chang Caine (Carradine’s character in Kung Fu), offering
deep-sounding Chinese parables with psychopathic twists, in between the soothing tunes of
Caine’s trademark wooden flute. Bill is also a philosophizing thug to rival any of
Tarantino’s earlier creations and his discussions of his feelings are among the most
humorous and also unsettling parts of the movie. He has a memorable monologue on the
difference between professional killers like himself and everyday people, by way of a
comparison between comic-book heroes and their alter egos. "Clark Kent is Superman's
critique of the human race," he decides. Carradine perfectly conveys both Bill’s
contempt for ordinary folks and his envy of their more placid lives. He's a wonderfully
complicated villain, and in Kill Bill, Tarantino gets as much out of his
characters’ often absurd struggles with emotion as he does out of the martial arts
battles.
- Chris Pepus
