Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 2 arrived in 2004 as the back half of a story he had already begun telling. Where the first film was a blade to the throat, this one is slower, stranger, and more interested in what a killer does when the killing is nearly done. It runs 136 minutes. It is an action film, a crime film, a thriller, and something closer to a sad character study wearing a revenge movie’s clothes.
Trailer, via Movieclips.
Uma Thurman and the Death List Five
The Bride, played by Uma Thurman, keeps her promise. She works through the band of assassins who tried to kill her and her unborn child, visiting each former associate one by one, checking off the names on her Death List Five until there is nothing left to do but kill Bill.
Thurman carries the film. She is Beatrix Kiddo, also called The Bride, also called ‘Black Mamba’, also called Mommy. That last name matters more than the tagline lets on.
David Carradine Finally Gets His Face
The first volume kept Bill off screen. Vol. 2 hands the role to David Carradine, billed as Bill ‘Snake Charmer’, and the film changes shape around him. Carradine plays the title character as a talker, not a swordsman, and the movie’s best passages are conversations.
Daryl Hannah returns as Elle Driver, ‘California Mountain Snake’. Michael Madsen is Budd, ‘Sidewinder’. Both are targets, and both get scenes that let them be more than obstacles.
The Bride unwaveringly continues on her roaring rampage of revenge against the band of assassins who had tried to kill her and her unborn child.
That synopsis is the plot. What it leaves out is the patience. Vol. 2 spends its running time on training, on memory, on the space between one kill and the next.
Gordon Liu Plays Pai Mei
Gordon Liu appears as Johnny Mo and as Pai Mei, the martial arts master who drills the Bride through her training. These sequences are the film’s spine. They are also where Tarantino’s script is most relaxed, letting a teacher and a student argue for long stretches.
Michael Parks does double duty as Earl McGraw and Esteban Vihaio. James Parks plays Edgar McGraw. Vivica A. Fox returns as Vernita Green, ‘Copperhead’. Ambrosia Kelley plays Nikki. Perla Haney-Jardine plays B.B., the daughter whose existence reframes everything the Bride has done.
The supporting cast is deep and unshowy. Jonathan Loughran plays the Trucker. Michael Bowen plays Buck.
A Soundtrack by Robert Rodriguez and RZA
The Kill Bill Vol. 2 Original Soundtrack came out on April 13, 2004. It reached #58 on the Billboard 200 and #2 on the Billboard soundtracks chart in the US, and it hit the ARIA Top 50 album charts in Australia.
It was orchestrated by Tarantino’s fellow filmmaker and personal friend Robert Rodriguez, as well as RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. That pairing tells you what the film sounds like: spaghetti western strings on one side, hip-hop grain on the other. The music is not decoration. It does the work of holding two movies together.
Ranking the Bride’s Targets
The Death List Five gives the film its structure, and the order in which the Bride crosses names off is the order that matters most. Ranked by how much the film gets out of each confrontation:
- Bill ‘Snake Charmer’ — the last name on the list and the reason the list exists.
- Elle Driver, ‘California Mountain Snake’ — the most dangerous of the former associates, and the one who gets the tightest scene.
- Budd, ‘Sidewinder’ — the one whose ambush is the cruelest.
- Vernita Green, ‘Copperhead’ — the suburban mother, and the film’s coldest opening.
The ranking is not about screen time. It is about what each stop costs the Bride, and Vol. 2 is smart enough to know that the cheapest kill is rarely the easiest one.
What Vol. 2 Does Better Than Vol. 1
Vol. 2 is the less exciting film and the better one. The first volume was a set piece machine, all color and choreography, and it worked. This one slows down to let Thurman act, and she is better here than she is anywhere else in the two-part story.
Tarantino wrote and directed both. The runtime of 136 minutes is long for a revenge film, and the middle section sags. The Pai Mei training passages are the culprit. They are essential to the plot and they are also the part where the movie stops moving.
The Score: 7.9 of 10
The published audience score for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is 7.9/10, drawn from 15421 votes. That number is fair, and it is fair for a specific reason: this is a film with a great ending, a great performance, and a soft middle.
The ending is what earns the score. Carradine and Thurman share a final sequence that turns a revenge movie into something quieter, and the film has the nerve to let it play out. Everything before it is uneven. The training is too long. Some of the supporting players get a scene and nothing else.
What matters here is that Vol. 2 does something the first film could not: it makes you care whether the Bride stops. A lesser movie would have ended on the fifth name and a sword. This one ends on a conversation, and it is the right call. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is 7.9 of 10 — a slow, uneven, occasionally brilliant close to a story that needed one.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
