Kill Bill: Volume 2

"Once upon a time in China, some believe around the year one double-ought three, head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pai Mei, was walking down the road – contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pai Mei's nearly infinite powers would contemplate - which is another way of saying "who knows?" - when a Shaolin monk appeared on the road, traveling in the opposite direction. As the monk and the priest crossed paths, Pai Mei, in a practically unfathomable display of generosity, gave the monk the slightest of nods. The nod was not returned.Now, was it the intention of the Shaolin monk to insult Pai Mei? Or did he just fail to see the generous social gesture? The motives of the monk remain unknown. What is known were the consequences.The next morning Pai Mei appeared at the Shaolin Temple and demanded of the Temple's head abbot that he offer Pai Mei his neck to repay the insult. The Abbot at first tried to console Pai Mei, only to find Pai Mei was … inconsolable.So began the massacre of the Shaolin Temple and all sixty of the monks inside at the fists of the White Lotus. And so began the legend of Pai Mei's five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique."

"Is that not the perfect visual image of life and death? A fish flapping on the carpet, and a fish not flapping on the carpet."

"I suppose the traditional way to conclude this is we cross Hanzo swords. Well, it just so happens this hacienda comes with its very own private beach. And this private beach just so happens to look particularly beautiful bathed in moonlight. And there just so happens to be a full moon out tonight. So, swordfighter, if you want to sword fight, that's where I suggest. But if you wanna be old school about it, and you know I'm all about old school, then we can wait till dawn, and slice each other up at sunrise, like a couple of real-life, honest-to-goodness samurais."

"I'm a killer! I'm a murdering bastard, you know that. And there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard."

"Looked dead, didn't I? Well, I wasn't, but it wasn't for lack of trying I can tell you that. Actually, Bill's last bullet put me in a coma, a coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements referred to as a roaring rampage of revenge. I roared and I rampaged and I got bloody satisfaction. I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point. But I have only one more. The last one, the one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna kill Bill."

"My Pussy Wagon died on me."

"[lighting up a cigarette after Budd has collapsed from a black mamba bite] I'm sorry, Budd. That was rude of me, wasn't it? Budd, I'd like you to meet my friend, the black mamba. Black mamba, this is Budd. You know, before I picked that little fella up, I looked it up on the internet. Fascinating creature, the black mamba. Listen to this. [reads from a notepad] "In Africa, the saying goes, 'In the bush an elephant can kill you, a leopard can kill you, and a black mamba can kill you. But only with the mamba' — and this is true in Africa since the dawn of time — 'is death sure. Hence its handle: Death Incarnate.'" Pretty cool, huh? "Its neurotoxic venom is one of nature's most effective poisons, acting on the nervous system, causing paralysis. The venom of a black mamba can kill a human in four hours if, say, bitten on the ankle or the thumb. However, a bite to the face or torso can bring death from paralysis within 20 minutes." Now, you should listen to this, 'cause this concerns you. "The amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan." You know, I've always liked that word "gargantuan," and I so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence. "If not treated quickly with anti-venom, 10 to 15 milligrams can be fatal to human beings. However, the black mamba can deliver as much as 100 to 400 milligrams of venom from a single bite." [puts out her cigarette and addresses Budd] Now in these last agonizing minutes of life you have left, let me answer the question you asked earlier more thoroughly. Right at this moment, the biggest "R" I feel is Regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever known met her end at the hands of a bushwhackin', scrub, alky piece of shit like you. That woman deserved better."

"[on the phone with Bill] Let me put it this way: if you ever start feeling sentimental, go to Barstow, California. When you get here, walk into a florist and buy a bunch of flowers. Then you take those flowers to Huntington Cemetery on Fuller and Guadalupe, look for the headstone marked Paula Schultz, then lay them on the grave. Because you will be standing at the final resting place of Beatrix Kiddo."

"[last words before she dies, while screaming] F***ING B**CH!!! [screaming] F***ING B**CH!!! [screaming] I'LL KILL YOU!!! YOU'RE F***ING DEAD!!! [screaming] YOU B**CH!!! YOU B**CH!!! [moaning and screaming] I'LL F***ING KILL YOU, YOU B**CH!!! [hissing and screaming] OH, I'LL GET YOU!!! I'M GONNA... [screaming] WHERE ARE YOU?!?! LEMME F***ING KILLL YOU!!! [continues screaming] WHERE ARE YOU?!?! I'M COMING, YOU F***ING B**CH!!! [screaming] YOU'RE F***ING DEAD!!! YOU'RE DEAD!!! [continues screaming and crying] OH...SH*T!!!!!! [screaming]"

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

"The bride is back for the final cut"

"Kill is love."

"Back with a vengeance."

"The whole thrilling tale is revealed."

"Once again, with an insouciant blaze of energy and style, Tarantino has seen off the imitators, detractors and condescenders. True, the Kill Bill films do not have the dialogue riffs of his earlier work co-scripted with Roger Avary, apart from one small verbal arabesque here about Superman and Clark Kent. But as any screenplay handbook will tell you, writing for motion pictures is not about penning lines of dialogue; it is about fashioning a narrative and constructing an event. Kill Bill just seems to bypass the rational filters which impede the respectable films and attacks the endorphin centres of the brain."

"O: Do you think of Bill as a sympathetic character?"

"Q: There is a lot of introspection, a lot of character development in VOLUME 2. Tarantino has always described Bill as a pimp of death. But there seems to be more to the man."

"The movie is a distillation of the countless grind house kung-fu movies Tarantino has absorbed, and which he loves beyond all reason. Web sites have already enumerated his inspirations—how a sunset came from this, and a sword from that. He isn't copying, but transcending; there's a kind of urgency in the film, as if he's turning up the heat under his memories."

"The movie opens with a long closeup of The Bride (Uma Thurman) behind the wheel of a car, explaining her mission, which is to kill Bill. There is a lot of explaining in the film; Tarantino writes dialogue with quirky details that suggest the obsessions of his people. That's one of the ways he gives his movies a mythical quality; the characters don't talk in mundane everyday dialogue, but in a kind of elevated geekspeak that lovingly burnishes the details of their legends, methods, beliefs and arcane lore."

"The training with Pai Mei, we learn, prepared The Bride to begin her career with Bill ("jetting around the world making vast sums of money and killing for hire"), and is inserted in this movie at a time and place that makes it function like a classic cliffhanger. In setting up this scene, Tarantino once again pauses for colorful dialogue; The Bride is informed by Bill that Pai Mei hates women, whites and Americans, and much of his legend is described. Such speeches function in Tarantino not as long-winded detours, but as a way of setting up characters and situations with dimensions it would be difficult to establish dramatically."

"The fight with Elle Driver is a virtuoso celebration of fight choreography; although we are aware that all is not as it seems in movie action sequences, Thurman and Hannah must have trained long and hard to even seem to do what they do. Their battle takes place inside Budd's trailer home, which is pretty much demolished in the process, and provides a contrast to the elegant nightclub setting of the fight with O-Ren Ishii; it ends in a squishy way that would be unsettling in another kind of movie, but here all the action is so ironically heightened that we may cringe and laugh at the same time."

"Of the original "Kill Bill," I wrote: "The movie is all storytelling and no story. The motivations have no psychological depth or resonance, but are simply plot markers. The characters consist of their characteristics." True, but one of the achievements of "Volume 2" is that the story is filled in, the characters are developed, and they do begin to resonate, especially during the extraordinary final meeting between The Bride and Bill—which consists not of nonstop action but of more hypnotic dialogue and ends in an event that is like a quiet, deadly punch line."

"Q: What side of Elle do we see in VOLUME 2?"

"A: Actually, I do use the word 'gargantuan,' I like the word 'gargantuan,' it's a fun word to say."

"Q: That trailer of Budd's would seem like an unlikely location for a couple of monumental showdowns."

"The Mexican and American Southwest settings and use of material from Ennio Morricone’s scores rep the obvious ways in which “Vol. 2” derives from Sergio Leone, but equally important is the influence of the Italian master in pushing Tarantino to expand what could have been perfunctory scenes into hugely elaborated set-pieces; latter detailing is what gives “Vol. 2” its special charge for film buffs or anyone who keys into what Tarantino is up to."

"All of the director's musical, film and comic-book loves are on display; he gives much play to the grungy martial-arts melodrama Five Fingers of Death, evoking its use of Quincy Jones's Ironside theme and plucking several of its plot devices. As befits that kind of density, there are more entrances, back stories and origins in Vol. 2 than in the first hundred issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, Leone's Man With No Name trilogy and all the Shogun Assassin movies combined. But unlike the 100-meter-high hurdles of Vol. 1, Vol. 2 feels like a cross-country run, with hills and long stretches of flatland, as it settles into its casual, carnage-laden pace. It has the wily, extended cadences of Leone's movies, with the first 15 or so minutes filmed in loamy, luscious black-and-white and set in what could only be called exploitation-picture Texas. (What the master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro does with shadow, the director of photography Robert Richardson does with light, painting even the interiors with warm, bright flares. His harsh but loving glow permeates this adventure and, like Mr. Storaro's, his signature is instantly recognizable.)"

"Vol. 2 works like a multimedia mix tape, and Mr. Tarantino rides the tempo of his films like a D.J., abetted in the wheel-in-a-wheel trickiness by the deft fingers of his editor Sally Menke. When one of the characters in Vol. 2 makes an offhand remark about undisputed truth, Mr. Tarantino's actual forebear is clear: the R&B producer Norman Whitfield. Mr. Whitfield was the link between Detroit slick (Motown) and funk (Parliament/Funkadelic). While adding a few licks of his own, Mr. Tarantino, like Mr. Whitfield, gets goose flesh from the evil that lurks within."

"Maybe it is progress of a sort—moral if not cinematic—that in KB2 Tarantino largely eschews the hyper-violence that characterized its predecessor. But rather than replace it with, say, clever dialogue, imaginative plotting, or meaningful Character development, he's substituted the cinematic equivalent of dead air. He intends this to be a nod to the stately, deliberate style of Leone, but it's unaccompanied by any of the elements that made that style great—the use of landscape (both facial and geological), the musical crescendos (Tarantino borrows some Morricone tunes in KB2, but seems afraid of using them in anything other than a minor key), the rhythmic interaction of lengthy buildup followed by momentary violence. (Quentin prefers lengthy buildup followed by lengthy violence; it's not the same thing.) Leone was by nature a mythologizer; Tarantino is by nature a demythologizer. His killer-heroes are not silent, stoic types. They're video store clerks with guns, babblers on every subject from Madonna to French cheeseburgers."

"The audience has expanded. We have more women this time than we had on Volume 1. There was less violence in this one, and that came out in the publicity and the reviews, which drove more women into the theater. And the movie really stands by itself; you don't have to see Volume 1 to enjoy Volume 2."

"Vol. 2 makes a compelling case for a more serious interpretation of Tarantino’s talent, and the film justifies the otherwise vapid (and very cool) Vol. 1, which should never have existed as a separate film. The commercial logistics of a four-hour movie aside, Kill Bill would have worked best as a single entity, the second half imbuing the first with a certain weight. Indeed, Tarantino’s lip fetish is itself enough to empower Vol. 2 with far more powerful scenes than Vol. 1: when a tied-up Beatrix must wrap her lips around a flashlight, the degrading image is worth more than any moment in the first volume. Here Tarantino employs the same technique as in Reservoir Dogs, where he subtly focused on his characters’ ears before slicing one off in the end. It’s a cruel trick, but a crafty one—and proof that Tarantino plays more than lip service to the art of film."

"Q: Uma, how was it to shoot the coffin scene, as a claustrophobic person myself it seemed very scary to watch?"

"We try to appeal to her maternal instincts, and suggest that the ending, in which Beatrix is reunited with her four-year-old daughter, makes the film a kind of love story, a family romance. Did she like that about it? "Yeah, I think it takes a tremendous turn where the character is thrown back into life, because if that hadn't happened she might as well have given herself a five-point exploding palm and died."

"Uma Thurman doesn’t get nailed to a cross in Kill Bill Vol. 2, but writer-director Quentin Tarantino runs her battered character, called the Bride, through a gauntlet that is gory enough to make Mel Gibson flinch. No matter. You’ll thrill to the action, savor the tasty dialogue and laugh like bloody hell. Tarantino has done more than continue the revenge tale he started in Vol. 1 — the Bride wants payback after being left for dead in her wedding dress by Bill (David Carradine) and four other killers in his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, of which she was once queen bee. Vol. 2 ties the events of Vol. 1 together, just like The Return of the King did for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. You watch and think, “I get it now.” Tarantino has made the hottest mix tape in the history of cinema. Like a master DJ, he samples every lowdown, B-movie genre that formed him, from kung fu and samurai flicks to anime and spaghetti westerns, then filters it through his imagination to create something totally Tarantino: a blast of pure movie oxygen."

"Uma Thurman – Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride"

"David Carradine – Bill"

"Gordon Liu – Pai Mei"

"Michael Madsen – Budd"

"Daryl Hannah – Elle Driver"