Blood Not-So-Simple: Ending The Pop-Cultural Pastiche

After six months, Quentin Tarantino's pulp-fiction saga finally wraps up its revenge-fantasy spectacle. And whether you zero in on the parts or try to take in the whole, it's still undeniably a spectacle--kinetic, convoluted, over-the-top and, above all, unashamedly enthralled with trashy genre conventions and movie-world violence. But, while Kill Bill, Vol. 2 picks up where the first left off, energized by the hunt for vengeance, it proves most intent on investing some complicating emotion into the Bride's tale. The first installment's cool rush of action gives way to a more meditative mood and a concerted bid for pathos.

What is surprising--and disappointing--is that this central shift ends up being strikingly inappropriate. On the surface, deepening emotion seems like the natural development and the path to a satisfying conclusion. But as it plays out, something essential seems to be abandoned. Upending all expectations, Kill Bill, Vol. 1 comes out looking leaner, more accomplished, and more fully realized as an artistic statement than its successor does. And, unfortunately, we're left with a Kill Bill combo looking more flawed than masterful.

This is only the broadest way in which the two volumes play off one another, remaining connected yet distinct, like two movements in a deranged pop-movie symphony. More plainly, Vol. 2 injects a good deal more talk into the proceedings. Pontificating monologues, chitchat back-and-forths, and face-off put-ons are allotted ample room, woven into our heroine's final showdowns. With Tarantino, that means an injection of his characteristic dialogue style--profuse expletives, pop-culture riffing, and a theatrical flair for the patiently constructed anecdote, insult, or mock-philosophical discourse.

In particular, the three remaining members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad are indulged with the most extended passages. Shunted to either brief appearances or merely a disembodied voice in Vol. 1, here they burst onto the scene spouting off at the mouth, as if to make up for lost time.

Vol. 1 saw two of the names crossed off on the Bride's oversized kill list--Copperhead Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) and Cottonmouth O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). Now, these terse, girl-power agents are literally out of the picture. Vol. 2 brings the traditional macho posturing of revenge movies back to the fore. Apart from one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Uma Thurman's single-minded avenger, Black Mamba, has to track down two vicious bastards: Sidewinder Budd (Michael Madsen) and the man himself, Bill (David Carradine).

Carradine is the casting masterstroke, a decision on par with Robert Forester in Jackie Brown, which led to the resurrection of a singular, forgotten screen presence. Meanwhile Madsen, a Tarantino alum from Reservoir Dogs, eases into his role as a crude, white trash retiree. He fills out the part of both the retrograde vigilante of hicksploitation fare and the fallen gunslinger of many a classic '50s B-movie western, starting with those of his namesake, director Budd Boetticher.

The saturation of movie referencing by no means diminishes in Vol. 2; it just goes west. Note the opening flashback to the wedding massacre (an iconic frontier gathering disrupted by outlaws) and the wholesale lifting of Ennio Morricone's brilliant theme music from "The Man With No Name" trilogy. That set of spaghetti westerns by Sergio Leone, along with his epic Once Upon a Time in the West, also provides a directing template for Tarantino, who draws on the films' musical feel for montage and flamboyant editing. Like with Leone, the characters' dirty, beaten faces become landscapes in themselves by cutting between widescreen vistas and extreme close-ups. Tarantino even includes a pointed reference to The Searchers' famous shot of a sunny desert framed through a doorway; the Bride takes the Duke's place as the conflicted, isolated killer out for revenge.

But Tarantino is a good cosmopolitan postmodernist, and the Asian influence remains strong. In addition to more swordplay, we get an elaborate gloss on The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, one of the bedrocks of '70s kung fu.

Just as in Vol. 1, the danger is that all this fervid citation and knowing homage creates an echo chamber of movie buff flattery. Vol. 2 tries to skirt the matter by recasting its tone as more playful, more serious, and more critical. Accordingly, Kill Bill's funniest, most painfully visceral, and most self-conscious moments all occur in Vol. 2, awkwardly smashed up against each other and vying for the viewer's thematic concern. And just as von Trier did with Kidman in Dogville, Tarantino puts Thurman through a gauntlet of unnerving brutality.

If there's a key shift in the movie, it comes in the last couple reels. Going for catharsis, Tarantino jettisons genre trappings for a protracted verbal confrontation. Though bold, the move is also totally at odds with the driving spirit of Kill Bill up to that point. Especially in retrospect, Vol. 1 worked by keeping emotional shadings latent. It put its faith in genre movies as monumental pop-cultural objects. The overlooked depth to the movie is its ecstatic way of bringing out this truth in its otherwise disreputable material. Tarantino would have been wise to follow that pattern and avoid his misguided attempt to force emotions into the successor.