As the New York Times put it, the first half of Kill Bill paid homage to Eastern movies, and the second half gives tribute to the West – specifically, the western, along with a smattering of noir. To digress for a moment (yes, totally out of character for me): Having read various interviews with Tarantino in the past week, while I was waiting for the movie to start, I started thinking about the difference between him and, say, Kevin Smith, to pick on one of my favorite whipping boys. Smith appears uninterested in any movie made in a different language or before Star Wars. Tarantino will watch anything – more than that, he wants to watch everything -- and he can glean something out of even a movie trailer and put it to good use. Moreover, he doesn’t just mindlessly ape a cool shot because it looks cool, he understands what it means, and he uses in the proper context in his own movie. It occurred to me, seeing the vast and wildly diverse range of movies that Tarantino refers to in his interviews and hearing the childlike enthusiasm in his voice when he talks about movies, that he just needs some maturity and a little – okay, a lot of – humility, and he could be the next Martin Scorsese, at least in terms of discussing cinema. I’d love to see his version of A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies, a few years down the line when he has a broader perspective of the non-cinema world. Better yet, can you imagine Tarantino and Scorsese talking movies with each other? The eagerness with which their words tumble out of them, the way they jump cars on their respective trains of thought, the sheer number of movies they’ve each seen and the way they interpret them… it would be dizzying and spellbinding.
Vol. 2 is, I think, better than Vol. 1. If it’s not as ferociously fast-paced and seems a little too long, it’s more thoughtful and emotional. One article I read suggested that Tarantino might have been planning all along to split the movie into two parts, because if it were a single movie, the shift in tone would be too abrupt and pronounced. I'd be curious to know if Tarantino spent extra time honing Vol. 2; it just seems like a better-crafted movie than the first half. (Maybe that's my personal bias talking, since I'm better acquainted with western -- and Western -- movies than with Asian grindhouse.)
The violence is significantly dialed down (although there’s still one… uh, action that made me gag), and this time, the homages didn’t seem as blatant and undigested as they did in the first part. Although they’re still a significant part of the movie, they seem filtered through Tarantino’s vision and style for the film as a whole, instead of just thrown in there because he thought it would be cool. About the only annoyance that the second half repeats from the first is the obnoxious bleeping out of the Bride’s name when it’s uttered… but then, halfway through the movie, we find out her name anyway! That’s just plain stupid, as far as I’m concerned, stupid and cutesy, and it doesn’t work. (Not to mention that her name is pretty dopey.)
Aside from that minor complaint, I really enjoyed Vol. 2. David Carradine gets a full-fledged role to play, and he’s terrific. Uma Thurman, too, gets to act (beyond just acting pissed off), and her scenes with Carradine in particular are great. The action is still terrific -- great fights, though much shorter than the epic battles in Vol. 1 (some kung fu, some sword fu, even a little beard fu, as Joe Bob would call it, courtesy of the great Gordon Liu [would that be Liu fu?]) -- but, shockingly for a Tarantino film, most of the action is emotional. It ain't Scorsese yet, but he's getting there.
(Tarantino also succinctly expressed my annoyance with
directors who spell everything out in an interview he gave recently; see
my movie quotes page.)
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