'Kill Bill,' Killed
Quentin Tarantino's Revenge Epic Turns Into a Surprising Failure
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Opens Fri April 16.
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When we last left the Bride (Uma Thurman) at the end of Quentin Tarantino's delirious and messy Kill Bill Vol. 1, she had scratched off just two names from her "to kill" list: Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). Ms. Green had found herself on the bad end of a hunting knife; Ms. Ishii's coiffure had received a severe trim--both ladies had put up decent squabbles, but both had fallen nonetheless. Which left three villains left to be dealt with in Vol. 2: Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Budd (Michael Madsen), and, of course, Bill (David Carradine).
As Vol. 2 opens, the Bride is on her way to scratch off that final name. Barreling down a lonely stretch of road in a convertible, she informs us directly: "I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point... and now I'm gonna kill Bill." This opening sequence, shot in glorious black and white, carries over the genre-pilfering that Tarantino used to such startling effect in Vol. 1. The Bride behind the wheel... the wind whipping through her blond locks... her surroundings rear-screen-projected around her--it could be straight from '50s noir, like the beginning of Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place if Humphrey Bogart had looked us in the eye and told us he was a bitter and violent misanthrope. But Thurman, though perfectly lithe and athletic for the role of the Bride, can't deliver her opening lines with a properly threatening tone; stilted and unconvincing, there is far too much ham and cheese at play in her delivery. Simply put, danger is not in Thurman's acting range, and her opening stumbles foreshadow unfortunate things to come. Kill Bill Vol. 2 is not only not on par with its predecessor, it pretty much undermines Vol. 1, exposing Tarantino's grand revenge opus as a surprising failure. Why did Tarantino divide Kill Bill into two films? Apparently because it could have never worked as one.
One of the chief complaints about Vol. 1 (besides, of course, the predictable rants about violence) was the film's lack of character development. Indeed, it wasn't really a lack as much as a gaping void; little more than a potpourri of grind-house fare, Vol. 1 kicked all depth and nuance of character far out of frame, promising that all that meat would be served in Vol. 2. But if the continuation proves anything, it's an adage: Beware of what you wish for. There is very little spectacle to be found in Vol. 2, offering instead glacial pacing, much conversation, and a creepy foray into one of Tarantino's chief obsessions. Said obsession: punishing and tormenting his leading lady for 130 minutes--Kill Uma.
There is nothing wrong with directors abusing their leads, of course. Die Hard, perhaps the greatest American action film, not only pummeled Bruce Willis but creatively molded one of the abuses forced upon him--broken glass, bare feet--into an engaging plot point. But unlike Die Hard, Tarantino's infatuation with a battered and bleeding Uma Thurman falls under the category of ick. Consider what she has been through: a gunshot to the head, the loss of a child, repeated rapes while in a coma, more cuts and gashes than can be counted--and that's just in Vol. 1. In Vol. 2? A point-blank blast of rock salt from a shotgun; a stint being buried alive; more cuts and gashes; and, as a final insult, a lecture from Bill on progressive parenting. Ouch.
Still, if an exhaustion with Tarantino's Uma fetish were Kill Bill Vol. 2's only fault, not all would have been lost. Sadly, though, this is not the case. Where Vol. 1 was wild and cluttered and absurd, Vol. 2 is pondering and, in a surprising twist, often dull--so much so that David Carradine's line delivery, which clocks somewhere near the speed of continental drift, nearly sent me running for the exit. (And I wasn't the only one; the screening of Vol. 2 was a shockingly quiet affair for the audience, and I'm fairly certain it wasn't due to rapt attention.) There are long stretches of Vol. 2 that weigh heavily upon the eyelids, and although this in itself is not always a terrible thing (see the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, especially Stalker), Vol. 2's pacing exposes a glaring flaw in Tarantino's larger script: It is fatally top-heavy.
The climax in Vol. 1, as I'm sure we all recall, was the Bride's invasion of the House of Blue Leaves, where she squared off with (and lopped the limbs off of) a number of O-Ren Ishii's henchmen. It was a dazzling fit of violent lunacy--entertaining, original, and com- pletely ridiculous--and, when it passed, those of us who appreciate such tomfoolery were left trembling. But here's the thing: The battle of the House of Blue Leaves was Vol. 1's climax, but only because Tarantino had jumbled up Vol. 1's script. It was as if he had thrown everything he had into this fight and then, when he realized it was more like a closing scene than an early scrimmage, he tweaked the chronology to cover his tracks. The whole Kill Bill project suffers from this same kind of jerry-rigging: All Tarantino's energy apparently went into Vol. 1. The result of this structuring? T. S. Eliot comes to mind--not with a bang, but a whimper.
As a whole piece (as it was originally intended), Kill Bill would've toppled over, eventually landing with a thud upon its inevitable anti-climax. There are some surprising fits to be found in Vol. 2 (including the Bride's squaring off with Elle Driver, a romp that owes much to the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona), but the final tally fails to shatter the earth--a shame, since Vol. 1 built hopes up so high. Lest we forget, Kill Bill, at its heart, is little more than a stock revenge flick--so why then does Tarantino waste so much of our time, and put forth so little apparent effort, in bringing the tale to a close? I can hazard a guess: His desire to make something far more important than it should be trumped his ability to make something great. The resulting film is, when spackled together, one-half genius and one-half a failure. This half is the failure, and, in the end, it taints the genius.
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