How will she escape? The answer is a long time coming as her interment is followed by a flashback to her arduous, two-year training under a sadistic, white-bearded kung fu master in China - a chapter that might have been called ' Sensei and Sensibility '. This comes when Budd turns the tables on The Bride and buries her alive in a hefty coffin, her arms and feet bound, but with a flashlight to face her death. At only one point was I truly gripped, as indeed anyone suffering even mildly from claustrophobia would be. This doesn't prevent it being entertaining, and Robert Richardson, a very gifted cinematographer, provides some arresting images. (Who employs Bill's assassins? How are they contacted? What are they paid?) It's actually lifeless, lacking any self-generated artistic vitality. This has been lifted almost verbatim from Jules Feiffer's 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes. One of these speeches, delivered at the end by Bill (presented as some sort of Nietzschean figure who has transcended evil), is about superheroes in the comics, and how Clark Kent is Superman's alter ego, not his real self, and is Superman's comment on dim, everyday human existence. Before each killing, and on various other occasions, there are long humourless speeches of pseudo-profundity about life and death that suggest Tarantino has lost (temporarily one hopes) the wit and the gutter poetry that informed Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Having disposed of two other colleagues, both female, in the earlier movie, The Bride has three victims left: the one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen) - a once proud warrior reduced to a slab of bloated trailer trash - and of course Bill himself. In the movie's final credits Thurman is listed under her various identities - 'The Bride, Black Mamba, Beatrix Kiddo, and Mommy'. There's a flashback to a risible incident where evidence of early pregnancy in the form of a positive test convinces another female assassin to spare The Bride's life. In an unconvincing fashion, both chilling and cosy, the pic ture ends up a sort of hymn to motherhood. The film turns out to be not merely a search for revenge but also for the recovery of the daughter, now five years old, abducted by Bill. Where Volume 1 was sadomasochistic in tone, this one is infused with what you might call sado-sentimentalism, with constant emphasis on humiliation and pain. Indeed, only one of its five chapters is set largely in Asia, and the second movie is both less stylised and less mystical. One of its most shocking moments - a deadly snake striking from a pile of money - is borrowed from Joseph Mankiewicz's only western There Was a Crooked Man. This opening is inspired by the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, and Volume 2 is more indebted to the spaghetti western (it borrows quite a lot of Ennio Morricone's music from Sergio Leone films) and less to martial arts movies than was its predecessor. The Bride would have no difficulty ordering a 'Royale with cheese' at McDonald's in Paris, but Tarantino has not taught her how to pronounce coup de grace. Her fiancé is killed, and she's left in a coma for four years before setting off on her revenge trip. It is here that her former lover Bill (David Carradine), by whom she is eight months pregnant, and the four other members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, punish her for deserting them. She takes us back to where the first movie began - a massacre in a wedding chapel in south west Texas - which she tells us in a self-aggrandising way (or in mockery of self-aggrandisement) 'has become a legend'. Quentin Tarantino begins Kill Bill Volume 2 with a black-and-white widescreen image of his heroine called 'The Bride' (Uma Thurman), who delivers a brief synopsis of Volume 1 as she drives a convertible at some speed through the desert. Kill Bill Volume 2t (136 mins, 18) Directed by Quentin Tarantino starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |