Kill Bill Vol. 2

Regular visitors to the site know that I had some issues with “Kill Bill Vol. 1” (see above). But in the second installment, Quentin Tarantino lays to rest any doubt that he is a film virtuoso. The cinema craft on display is breathtaking. Tarantino is able to do anything he wants with a camera, a shot, or a mood. KB-1 was little more than a nonstop circus of highly stylized bloodletting and suffered from a lack of interest in its characters or even its story. KB-2 in contrast, renders down the violence to a few very intense but controlled sequences. It spends most of its energy and time on establishing a sense of place and of character. The movie also fills in the story gaps that were so maddeningly absent in the first picture. The genius of Tarantino is that even when he makes the artificiality of film explicit, he does it in a way that enhances our appreciation of what is happening onscreen. What might, in lesser hands, come across as technique for the sake of technique, in Tarantino's hands lends depth and perspective to the movie. He gets terrific performances out of his excellent cast (Uma Thurman, Darryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Gordon Liu, and David Carradine) but most important, Tarantino gives “Kill Bill Vol. 2” what the first film lacked: soul.