Kill Bill Again

Actually, Kill Bill Vol. 2, but who’s counting? As I said above, I went to see KB1 reluctantly. It was so astonishing that I was really looking forward to KB2. And what I got was a deflating balloon. A very severe disappointment after the pyrotechnics of the first one. There are good things here, especially the character of Darryl Hannah and her fight with Uma, but overall it is slow and unconvincing. The only way to make material like this work for me is to move along so fast, at such a relentless pace, that you don’t have time to think about how stupid it all is. This one gave me entirely too much time to think. To think that having a “special” sword is bunk. To think that there is no such thing as the “five fingers of death,” or whatever they called it … and you know, when you first hear of this special Kung-fu move, that it is how she will kill Bill. That sort of predictability is deadly, and not what I expect from QT. That people do not sit around and discuss things in a civilized way when they are about to attempt to kill each other. Basically, the whole 4-hour marathon fell apart whenever Bill showed up. I simply didn’t believe in him. And I thought the ending was a total bore.