|
|
Kill Bill Vol. 2
(2004)
Dir: Quentin Tarantino
Kill Bill Vol.2 is a family film, but not the kind with a coy, balladeering, animated swordfish. It’s more like Steel Magnolias with blood for tears, and David Carradine for Tom Skerritt. Okay that’s a lie too. It’s simply a dramatic love story set against the tribulations of a dysfunctional family. But then again, to call a family that spends the majority of its lifespan fighting, “dysfunctional,” is total bullshit too. Look at any family, look at the human family, fighting is how we function. A truly dysfunctional family would wile away the waking hours in peaceful blurs of unwavering acceptance and adoration; living a scene out of some deluded Teshian wet dream. Breaking plates, toppling bookshelves, sabotaging car-brakes, throwing things, screaming obscenities; filleting one another with Hattori Hanzo blades, that’s where the real passion comes from. It sharpens the wits, gets the blood pumping, and ripens the loins for lusty procreation. There are few things in this world cozier than family violence. Where Vol.1 dropped viewers into the pit of the fully matured death-cauldron that is the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad’s way of life, Vol.2 supplants the action with non-sequential, heartfelt exposes on the family’s torrid history. Turns out these people know each other nearly as well as they know themselves. For all of the genre splicing, homage serving, and quirky character studying encompassed by Vol.2, what it’s really all about is family life. This family is teeming with betrayal, deceit and bloodshed. Bill’s team of assassins share the technique and training they were raised with, like other families share memories of road trips to Yosemite with Jimmy Buffet‘s Greatest Hits on the car stereo. Siblings by proxy, they have been called upon to destroy their sister, The Bride, Beatrice Kiddo. Vol.2 tells you why they want to kill her and also explains why she wants to kill Bill. It would be awfully unsatisfying if it didn’t, but the really satisfying thing about this movie is that it says it’s okay to talk about your problems (danger! minor plot points follow). It’s good, in fact, to hash things out verbally before you pluck out your sister’s only remaining eye and leave her for dead in a trailer that‘s in the middle of the desert. It’s also paramount that you fully acknowledge your shortcomings and oversights in a relationship, before making your lover’s heart (literally) explode. This isn’t the kind of gory entertainment that desensitizes viewers to violence. Save those pussy drive-by’s for the nightly news. The violence in Vol.2 is the product of careful consideration and detailed planning. The killing here is the respectful, traditional handiwork of the samurai. And it’s amongst kin. As far as Tarantino movies go, Vol.2 is more of a macabre Jackie Brown to Vol.1’s, Pulp Fiction with a cat’s-eye of crank in each nostril. It is nowhere near as limber as Vol.1, but Vol.2 is still plenty sassy. Wordy and laced with oddball characters, it eventually manages to coalesce into a blood-spattered episode of Mad About You, with Uma Thurman for Helen Hunt, and Paul Riser dead in the yard.
|
|
|
