Seven Oaks Magazine.

Walking out of Kill Bill Volume 1 in 2003, two thoughts came to mind. The first had to do with director Quentin Tarantino's blatant disregard of substance for style in the film. The movie was crammed with visual tricks and treats at the expense of substance. The second thing that occurred to me is that this film will either be loved, or loathed, with nothing in between. Cartoonish, but sickeningly real violence, campy '70s kung fu film allusions, geeky dialogue, comic book cinematography and art direction, and geysers of blood would either completely endear themselves to the audience, or elicit absolute revulsion.

After viewing Kill Bill Volume 1 I found myself at a curious impasse. I admired the film, but loathed myself for doing so. I smiled inwardly as the bride zipped and sliced her way through the Crazy 88, a horde of highly trained assassins, but then shuddered when I saw a victim writhing and bleeding in the background. As the movie ended, I secretly - and with a heavy heart - admitted to myself that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and scowled at my perversion for reveling in a screen soaked in blood. These struggles were only the beginning, as similar feelings about dialogue and narrative nagged the back of my mind. However, I found myself anxious to view the second half.

Seven months later, Kill Bill Vol. 2 has been released to conclude this "gory story." As in the first, the Bride (Uma Thurman) is on a quest to avenge the deaths of her wedding entourage and her unborn daughter, who were killed by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. The Bride, a former assassin in the Squad, had left to start a quiet life, spurning the leader - and lover/father figure - "Snake Charmer" Bill. By the end of the first film, she had worked her way through two enemies and had left a bloody, mutilated message for Bill to discover. All of this is recounted in the strange opening monologue of vol. 2 . A lesser director would have continued the rampage of the first, trying to up the ante of the first film with more gore. But the story shifts gears in the vol. 2 , slowing down the high-octane story to explore and comment on complexities of the characters introduced in the first film.

The Bride must confront the two remaining members of the Squad, Budd and Elle, and then Bill himself. Budd (Michael Madsen) is Bill's brother, an alcoholic, lapsed assassin, working as a bouncer and living in a trailer home. Elle (Darryl Hannah) is a slick, eye-patched killer whose only weakness is her inability to get Bill to notice her. The Bride's battle with these two unexpectedly provides depth to all the characters. In fact, because of the way vol. 2 is directed, with its slower pace, we see the substance missing from the first film has found itself in the second.

While Vol. 2 is full of Tarantino's quirky-for-its-own-sake directorial sensibility, the storytelling is nevertheless effective. Whether a woman reads notes from the Internet about the deadly black mamba snake to a man dying from its bite, or a victim is buried alive in a sequence more terrifying than any I have ever seen - or rather, heard - the film grips the audience's attention and fails to let go. It's enthralling stuff, and redeems what could have been the failures of Volume 1 .

It begins by revealing exactly what happened at the Two Pines Chapel. The audience is finally introduced to Bill (David Carradine). In a nice homage to Carradine's previous work in Kung Fu , Bill is crouching outside the chapel, playing his wooden flute (there are many references to Carradine's previous work - for instance, look for a cue from Death Race 2000 when Bill is speaking to Budd). From there, we follow the Bride as she continues her quest. How this happens and ends the story is Tarantino's great achievement in the Kill Bill films.

Tarantino's sure directorial hand takes many of the elements of a strange but innovative time in cinematic history - the 1970s - and refines them to their most essential details. Building on the basic structure of a revenge/kung fu film, with all the fundamentals of its genre, Tarantino tells the story about loyalty and friendship that manages to be poignant. His stylistic flourishes, seemingly empty exercises in the Volume 1 , lend themselves to substance in Vol. 2 . His sensibility ensures the film is, in the end, about something. The Kill Bill films cannot be taken on their own. They are two halves of a masterful work, the result of a geek, in love with his own intellect and voice, finally given the resources to make the movie he's had in his head since working at a video store. Kill Bill maybe garish, bloody, and over-the-top, but it sure is fun to watch.