Kill Bill : Volume 2
"Wake-y wake-y, eggs and bac-y."
The blood splattered bride continues on her course of sweet revenge. As if I even need to say this...if you haven't seen its predecessor, then go rent it or something so you'll be all up to speed. If you don't, you'll be a bit bewildered as to why sweet little Uma is so pissed off.
We finally find out what Black Mamba's name is in this movie, instead of a "bleep" every time she is referenced. Although if you looked at her airline ticket in the first one, you can see it for a split second. Anyway. Now that O-Ren Ishii and Vernita Green are outta the way, she can move on to taking care of business with the rest of her former posse. We get a couple flashback sequences that take us into her training with Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), as well as we find out what happened at the chapel, and how things got really bad. Look for the cameo appearance by Samuel L. Jackson in the chapel scene. So, who's the rest of the posse and what are they like?
Budd (Michael Madsen) is a strip joint bouncer who seems quite content in his mobile home out in the middle of nowhere. He likes his Johnny Cash records and a bottle of whiskey to be close by. And he is one ruthless son of a bitch ala his Mr. Blonde character from Reservoir Dogs. The one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) is equally as vicious, and has no qualms about who she kills. And Bill (David Carradine) is mild mannered in his demeanor, but obviously has a cold heart. As he said in the first film, "This is me at my most sadistic."
There are a couple good good action scenes, but compared to Kill Bill - Vol. 1, it's toned down on the blood, gore, limbs, and severed heads. There's more substance and storyline here, which is fine, but because these movies have been touted as Quentin Tarantino scratching his martial arts itch, I was hoping for a bit more. The ending was a big letdown and too anticlimactic for me. Definitely not what I expected.
I'm glad this was stretched out to two films, because there was simply way too much material to squeeze it into a two or even a three hour movie. I'll be looking forward to the DVD in a few months so I can watch both films back to back. Hopefully, it'll have more bonus features on it than the Kill Bill - Vol. 1 DVD did.
