Movies

Tarantino uses irony to cut the violence in the thrill-a-minute Kill Bill Vol. 2

09:04 AM EDT on Friday, April 16, 2004

BY MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Miramax Uma Thurman returns as Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Six months after wowing audiences with his super-violent Hong Kong-style vengeance film Kill Bill Vol. 1, Quentin Tarantino once more unleashes cool beauty Uma Thurman as the angry Bride out to destroy the people who turned her wedding rehearsal into a massacre in Kill Bill Vol. 2.

The wait was worth it. Kill Bill Vol. 2 may not have quite the body count of the first film, in which Thurman's Bride took on a restaurant full of masked Japanese gangsters with her trusty sword. But it does have Tarantino's same time-shifting style of editing, which he perfected in Pulp Fiction; the same sense of jaundiced irony; even tighter situations for her to escape from and a knockout surprise ending that yanks the rug out from both the Bride and the audience. (At first I feared that people who hadn't seen the first film -- and it's new on video this week -- might not pick up on the potency of Vol. 2's last-reel twist. On second thought, however, there's an explanatory line at the very start of the film and, hopefully, everyone will be paying close attention.)

This time, Thurman's character has an actual name, albeit a strange one -- Beatrix Kiddo. Come to think of it, that's not much stranger than her nickname -- Black Mamba -- which also is the name of a super-poisonous snake that makes a memorable, darting appearance in Vol. 2.

Thurman, who trained long and hard to perfect the martial arts maneuvers and swordplay skills required for the two films, not to mention the rigors of the punishing fights she takes part in, owes as much to Pearl White as she does to Bruce Lee. White was the 1914 star of The Perils of Pauline, a thrilling continued-next-week movie serial in which Pauline faced a string of life-threatening dangers just before each chapter's fade-out.

In Vol. 2, Thurman undergoes the same kind of how's-she-gonna-get-out-of-this? situations, most excitingly when Beatrix is buried alive in a sequence reminiscent of the old American-International B-pictures Tarantino so loves, such as Premature Burial. Beatrix's premature burial, however, includes a long flashback sequence involving her martial arts schooling with a white-robed, long-white-haired, bushy-browed master (Gordon Liu), whose training is about to make a life-or-death difference.

Beatrix is a never-give-up character who wins us over completely with her mix of brains, beauty and foolhardy determination. Along the way we will encounter not only a premature burial and a slithering snake, but a return visit to the wedding massacre from the first film, plus eyeballs plucked from heads, kickings, pummelings, swordfights and numerous shootings with everything from assault rifles to pistols to a shotgun and a poison dart.

There's also the return of Daryl Hannah as a babe with a grudge and a patch over one eye, Michael Madsen as a dimwitted ne'er-do-well who thinks he's about to score $1 million and, most stunningly, David Carradine as Bill, the title character who was unseen except for a hand in Vol. 1.

Long-haired, wizened, calm, reflective, coddling yet viperish, Carradine's slightly lisping Bill is a snake charmer who can turn in a second from smiling adversary to icy killer.

Vol. 2 opens with a 15-minute black-and-white sequence that revisits the wedding massacre of Vol. 1, this time including vital information left out of the first film. This is where we first lay eyes on Bill, the leader of a gang of cold-blooded assassins and the character whom Beatrix is trying to escape via a new life with a simpleminded man in El Paso.

Because even people who haven't seen the first film will know what's coming, this seemingly innocent meeting is fraught with tension, however. When Beatrix kisses Bill, trying to smooth things over, he does not kiss her back. The sequence builds and builds until, like much of the rest of Vol. 2, Tarantino slams us with a payoff moment, something he manages to do right to the end.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 is galloping filmmaking, rich in action and adventure, but even more importantly, in solid, mesmerizing characters.

****

Kill Bill Vol. 2

Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Gordon Liu.

Rated: R, contains violence, profanity.