Home :: DVD :: Action & Adventure :: General  

Animal Action
Blackmail, Murder & Mayhem
Blaxploitation
Classics
Comic Action
Crime
Cult Classics
Disaster Films
Espionage
Futuristic
General

Hong Kong Action
Jungle Action
Kids & Teens
Martial Arts
Military & War
Romantic Adventure
Science Fiction
Sea Adventure
Series & Sequels
Superheroes
Swashbucklers
Television
Thrillers
Kill Bill, Volume 2

Kill Bill, Volume 2

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $13.99
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant sequel!
Review: Well, The Bride is back to defeat Bill's gang once and for all! This time, she must defeat the remaining three on the List.


I loved it. As good as the first, KB2 has less action, more storytelling. Of course that's not a bad thing. We get to know The Bride's real name, plus we get to see Bill for the first time! There's a lot of suspense, like when one of Bill's henchman burys The Bride alive!

This is an epic trioligy. Add it to your DVD collection!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Superb second chapter
Review: A radiant bride-to-be (and mother-to-be) who calls herself Arlene takes a few minutes out of her wedding rehearsal to talk to her former boss (and ex-lover) about the peaceful new life she's planned. She tells him she'll be working in a record store where she'll get to "listen to music all day, talk about music all day. It's really cool. It's going to be a great environment for my little girl to grow up in."

"As opposed to jetting around the world, killing human beings, collecting vast sums of money?" her one-time employer asks.

Yes, Arlene is actually The Bride (Uma Thurman), a.k.a. Black Mamba, one of the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad (D.I.V.A.S., for short). And, yes, the man with whom she's sharing her future plans is Bill, the enigmatic, shadowy D.I.V.A.S. commander who never showed his face in "Kill Bill, Vol. 1."

Bill, played to diabolical perfection by David Carradine, is visible throughout "Kill Bill, Vol. 2," and that's only one of the many changes between the first and last installments of writer-director Quentin Tarantino's epic saga of revenge and retribution. "Vol. 1," which took place largely in Japan, was a magnificently gory, almost operatic homage to the Hong Kong and Japanese cinema of the 1960s and 1970s; "Vol. 2," set primarily in Texas and Mexico, is considerably more controlled -- although no less stylish -- and moodier, paying tribute to the unconventional Westerns of director Sergio Leone and, in its black-and-white flashback sequences, recalling such late-1940s/early-1950s thrillers as "Gun Crazy" and "The Big Heat."

No one ever accused Tarantino of being shy when it comes to laying out his catalog of influences.

Cinematographer Robert Richardson's all-seeing camera swoops, slithers and moves stealthily around each scene, just like our unstoppable heroine, then throws in some extreme close-ups that feel like a fist between the eyes. Editor Sally Menke and production designers David Wasco and Cao Jui Ping do wonderful work as they recreate everything from "In Cold Blood" to the washed-out-looking, jumpy Chinese chop-socky films of the 1970s.

But far from being merely imitative, "Vol. 2" features a few breakthroughs for its creator as well. A prolonged sequence involving a character who is pummeled, drugged and buried alive is one of the most gripping episodes of Tarantino's career, and The Bride's apprenticeship to merciless martial arts master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), a deceptively wispy-looking type with a strong chauvinistic streak, is outrageously hilarious. "Your so-called kung fu is really quite pathetic," Pai Mei taunts as The Bride tries -- and fails -- to impress him with her moves. "Like all Yankee women, all you can do is order in restaurants and spend a man's money!"

The finale of "Vol. 1" was a blood-drenched, wickedly hilarious free-for-all, with The Bride dispatching scores of would-be hitmen in a showdown in a Tokyo nightclub, but the last half-hour of "Vol. 2" is a shocker of an entirely different kind, as Tarantino aims for the heart instead of the funnybone. He tried something somewhat similar in the bittersweet wrap-up of "Jackie Brown," with mixed results. He's much more successful this time out, partly because he's created a steadier build-up to the crucial emotional crescendo (set to a marvelously trippy remix of The Zombies' "She's Not There") and partly because the tension Carradine and Thurman generate in the pivotal scene, as bloodlust collides with memories of happier days, is utterly riveting.

Tarantino's cast fills out a classic rogues' gallery, dominated by Carradine's Bill, a psychotic who conceals his sadism beneath a calm, paternalistic exterior. Daryl Hannah's one-eyed Elle Driver and Michael Madsen's Budd, both of whom were briefly seen in "Vol. 1," get ample opportunity to prove their worth as antagonists of The Bride. The face-off with Elle, in particular, is so delightfully demented only Tarantino could have conjured it up.

Was the director wise in turning "Bill" into a double-bill? Absolutely. For one thing, he must have realized he had made an extravaganza that would have been too intense and certainly too emotionally exhausting for most audiences to process in a single four-hour sitting. Also, he obviously knew he had a second half that would be well worth the six-month wait.

"Gargantuan -- always liked that word; so rarely have a chance to use it in a sentence," the icy-hearted Elle murmurs at one point. Try this on for size: The frenzied, funny and unabashedly ultraviolent "Kill Bill" saga represents a gargantuan achievement in action cinema.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good in places.........
Review: Apparently, Tarantino had too much material to make one movie. However, it seems that there isn't enough to make two movies. Although the film has some great moments, and a fantastic soundtrack, it ends up being drawn out in places. Obviously, the interest in seeing this film, to most people, is to find out 'how it ends'. The last scenes between Thurman and Carradine are positively soporific. Too much small talk. Personally, I feel that Tarantino could have achieved just as much by making one epic volume....and cutting out the trivia of the second film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Overcoming fear and pain (DerWeg ReRate)
Review: As I stated in Vol 1 anybody else doing this movie would be told to make just one movie from the footage as some times the movie just goes off on one.
What was the point of the bar sceane??????? the story did not move along, and it would not be missed if removed.
Reason for 4 stars then well good fight sequences, some classic quotes and Uma

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Phenominal, even better than Vol. 1
Review: Focusing less on the bloody mayhem of Vol. 1 and more on his typical brand of storytelling and dialogue, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2 brings his epic homage to a close. Picking up where the first film left off, Vol. 2 finds the Bride (Uma Thurman) continuing her quest for revenge as she hunts down Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle (Darryl Hannah) in America before finally taking on Bill (David Carradine). The Bride's past is fleshed out and we learn what led up to the massacre at the wedding chapel which left our heroine in a coma and with a thirst for vengeance. Thurman is still perfect in the role she was born to play, and Carradine gives his best performance in years. Still though, you can tell this was a film that Tarantino made more for himself than for the movie going audience. It's still his homage to grindhouse cinema, and it's still as fresh as Volume 1. (...)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Bride Is Still Alive
Review: I just came back an hour ago after having seen the second installment of "Kill Bill", and wow, what a great film! Uma Thurman continues her quest to get her revenge.

We finally find out Black Mamba's name and we're mesmerized by the confrontrations between Black Mamba and those remaining on her Death List. This film of course has everything the first volume had...suspense, comedy, action, gross-out moments, surprises...and satisfaction. This movie is very satisfying! It won't disappoint! I was wondering if the secomd volume would be shorter than the first, but to my surprise, the second volume itself is two hours long, and sitting through it really paid off. Quentin Tarantino delivers this masterpiece...and the actors couldn't have dun a better job. I have newly found respect for the talents of Quentin Tarantino, Uma Thurman, and Darryl Hannah.

You really need to check out Kill Bill volumes 1 & 2. I'm very sure these'll be on your top-favorite movie list by the time you finish watching them.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best Film of 2004
Review: I love Quentin Tarantino and have never been dissapointed while watching one of his films (except Natural Born Killers but that doesn't count) and all of them are good. I've seen "Pulp Fiction"
an infinite amount of times and I think it is just pure classic.
And this might not make sense, but I probably like "Pulp Fiction"
more, but this movie just makes me utterly speechless. I saw the 1st movie a few weeks after it's release and it became my favorite movie (surpassing "8 Mile") and I put it at #1 on my top 10 list. I saw this movie the day it came out in April and
8 months and 80 something movies later I think it is the best film of the year. Why do I think this? Well, for one, it's better than Volume 1. And in a number of ways, one of them being that it ties up all the loose ends. It is not quite as action packed as the first one either, but it is more character driven and the dialouge (which is a word now synonmous with Tarantino)
just blows your mind. Uma Thurman in her golden globe nominated role as The Bride, is just great. However it IS NOT Thurman who delivers the best performance. It is David Carradine. Carradine
is just...Wow. David Carradine of the show "Kung Fu" and before this had had a cameo role in the disney channel show "Lizzie McGuire" delivers a performance that I think derserves an Oscar even though I don't think he will recieve his due this year.
The Bride has exed 2/5 of the people from her Death List and is left with: Budd(Michael Madsen,"Reservoir Dogs"), Elle Driver
(Darryl Hannah, "A Walk to Remember"), and of course, Bill.
Budd happens to be Bill's brother and is probably the most
sympathetic to The Bride...However he does it in his own sick and twisted way. Another character that stands out in the movie is Pei Mei (Gordon Liu), the person who trained The Bride to become who she is. This performance is hilarious. The flick of the beard thing is classic. Tarantino has constructed a film which deserves to be in the "Criterion Collection" and the
AFI's 100 best films of all time list. A+.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The epic is now complete
Review: I was lucky last year in that I got to see Kill Bill volume 1 weeks before it was released last year. I thought it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on film and went on to see it eight times in theaters. I even chose it as the best film of 2003. Surpassing even the mighty Lord of the Rings. Something I thought would never happen. Me being a big Lord of the Rings fan.

So with such high praise for volume 1 my hopes were very high for volume 2. And it more than delivers. Where volume 1 focused more on the action and was fast paced. This one is at a slower pace and is more dialogue driven. Which is what Tarantino does best anyway. At approximately two and a half hours it is also a lot longer than the first one. Don't worry though Kill Bill volume 2 is not without it's share with great fight scenes and memorable new characters. The most memorable is Pei Mei the martial arts master who trained the bride and the other members of the Dead Viper Assassination Squad. Played wonderfully by Gordon Liu (who also played Johnny Mo in volume 1) Pei Mei even over shadows the mighty Hattori Hanzo played by Sonny Chiba in volume 1.

Other memorable performances come from Michael Madsen as Budd a.k.a Sidewinder and David Carradine as Bill. Madsen gives another Mr. Blonde caliber performance as the former assassin turned trailer park alcoholic. Claustrophobics take caution the confrontation between Budd and the Bride is really intense and very claustrophobic. Darryl Hannah is deliciously evil as Elle Driver. She's about as evil as can be. What should be noted is the fight between Elle and the Bride. What is unquestionably one of the most knock down, drag out, intense fights ever put to film. Tarantino pulls no punches here. Huge credit should once again be given to the sound department on this one. You can almost feel ever blow. It is the best fight in the whole of Kill Bill.

Never seen and only heard in volume 1 we finally get to see the performance we've been waiting for. David Carradine is of course great in the title role. He plays the role with such a laid back ease. Both intimidating and cool. You don't know whether to sympathize with the guy or hate him.

Those who said Uma Thurman deserved an Oscar nomination last year will probably say the same thing this year and then some. Where Thurman was praised for the intense action in volume 1, in this one she really goes all out. No longer a nameless assassin out for revenge she is now with a name (to be revealed in the film) and is now seen more as a person then a nameless killer. Not that the nameless killer thing was a bad thing. It was a great action role. This time the emotions come out. Thurman really lets herself go in the emotional scenes. Well worthy of a nomination.

So is Kill Bill volume 2 a worthy conclusion? Absolutely. Is it as action packed as volume 1? No. But that's not a bad thing because we get more of the great Tarantino dialogue. Was there anything I found wrong with the film? Well, there was one little thing. The credits go on forever. So if your like me and you like to sit through the credits you've been warned. Kill Bill volume 2 will not be without it's enemies. Those who didn't like volume 1 will probably not enjoy this one. If you're a fan of volume 1 then you should be more then satisfied.

Matt Putnam
April 02, 2004

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Who would've thought this movie would be as good as it was?
Review: I was walking through the local Blockbuster one night and as usual nothing new was on the shelf.. So there it was Kill Bill Vol. 1, and to make a long story short i rented it, loved it, and this brings us to this movie, Kill Bill Vol.2. So if you're one of those who think you won't like this movie or Vol. 1, you're probably WRONG. The action and gore was definetly more intense in vol.1 but there was still plenty of action and brilliant dialogue in this conclusion. In particular, the fight scene with darryl hannah was excellent, the training with the karate instructor was to say the least, entertaining, & the close quarters that michael madsen puts Uma in, is something to see. I really enjoyed this movie more than any other Quentin Film, and recommend it to any action, Quentin, karate, swordfighting or just plain asskicking movie fans......

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Final Cut... Before Next Step!
Review: If Kill Bill vol.1 is splatter movie then Kill Bill vol.2 is drama movie. There are not many action parts in this sequal but it makes sense because vol.1 was full of them. See Chinese master whose student Bride was. He was really demanding but without his special skill that he taught to Bride Bill will be still alive. There is one breathtaking scene in which Bride will buried alive by bad guy. Again Chinese master's valuable hitting dogma helps Bride to survive from underground.

Uma Thurman acts really well and even better than Kill Bill vol.1. This movie shows her talents in revenger. Do you wanna ask her for date after seen this and first Kill Bill?

After you have seen this movie you will understand why Tarantion cutted Kill Bill for two pieces. Movies are somehow very different but they have also very much same elements. Revenge is the main theme! If liked vol.1, you don't necessarily love vol.2 or otherway. But I believe that you will find lot of good elements both movies. Violence movie is a very sensitive and difficult art of type. These Days Tarantino is one of the best for it.


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates