Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2. (Or "The Whole Bloody Affair")

I'm not a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino. He always comes off to me as pretentious and just a tad bit racist, especially in his interviews. 

However, I really do have to give the guy credit where credit is due. He does know how to make movies.

Now, I personally think some of his best films though good, are slightly overrated (Pulp Fiction) and he tends to blow smoke up his own ass when he directs films that need to be different just for the sake of being different. That being said, I do give the man credit in the fact that he does know how to make films that are totally different than anything you'll see in the mainstream pop culture of movies today.

He also likes to buck the conventions we always expect in films today. For example: he made Kill Bill a 4 and a half hour long movie. Now, he did split them into two volumes and divided their release date, but it was intended to be a full feature length film as it does follow the story of The Bride and her vendetta against Bill and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

So both are on Netflix and i thought I was just going to watch one and get to the other one sooner or later... until I watched Volume 1. And realized that this is a long ass movie I have time to watch, and therefore I watched Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

Kill Bill follows the story of The Bride, a woman who on her wedding day, is horribly beaten and shot in the head by her former lover Bill, the leader of the team of assassins called The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

Uma Thurman plays The Bride and the late David Carradine (though he doesn't even appear until the 2nd Vol.). And I understand why these are their most iconic roles. I don't really like Uma Thurman that much as an actress and David Carradine was an actor who wasn't as well known in his time. These two are really great foils to one another and yeah, its probably their best movies.

Since the movie is split into two Volumes I'll talk about each one individually.

Kill Bill Vol. 1

Volume 1 is the introduction of The Bride and her quest of vengeance against the team of assassins that tried to kill her 4 years prior.

And I will say, the first Volume of this film is actually great.

It really creates a character in The Bride that we care about and we want to see succeed. At the same time though she's a stone cold killer and she's kind of in the realm of all Tarantino characters in that they aren't exactly the nicest characters but they're just likable, and that's Uma Thurman as The Bride.

She is seeking vengeance and you want to see her get that. The first Volume is her going after the first two members of the assassin team played by Vivicia Fox and Lucy Liu. And it's a lot of martial arts action, lots of blood and gore, and some great stunts to go along with it. While Vivicia doesn't have a huge role in this movie her fight scene is a lot of fun and tension filled as it takes place in a suburb with her daughter coming home from school, its pretty great.

But the crowning jewel of this entire movie, Volume 1 and 2 is the story and fight surrounding Lucy Liu.

Lucy Liu plays the assassin and "Queen of the Japanese Underworld", O-Ren Ishii and I swear to god, everything about this character makes her one of the best villains I've seen in a long time and definitely the best adversary that The Bride fights in this entire movie... which is odd because the movie is called Kill Bill so you would think that Bill would be a top adversary... but anyways.

From the very beginning, Tarantino does his whole, let's be different thing in her introduction and tells her entire story in a drawing like a comic book. Her backstory is really compelling and it just creates a great legend for a great villainess. And it works perfectly for the kind of story that Tarantino sets up. I mean think about it, its a story about a woman called The Bride, fighting a group of assassins, one of them having an eyepatch, and the other one being a chinese japanese American leading the Yakuza, and a white guy named Bill who is a master in material arts master... its ridiculous but its great, and Lucy Liu is a fantastic addition to it that just makes the movie great.

And my god... the battle between the Crazy 88s and the Bride... damn.

That large scale battle and the one on one duel between The Bride and O-Ren is just fantastic, I don't know why Tarantino wanted to focus on anything else because he sure as hell knows how to do those action sequences, he sure as hell knows how to make these characters interesting and still manage to have those flares of Tarantino throughout, its just a ridiculous movie and it works perfectly.

And so when I finished Volume 1, I was pumped up, especially with the cliffhanger it left us with. I was ready to immediately put in Volume 2 and continue this "Whole Bloody Affair".

And then I saw Volume 2.

Kill Bill Volume 2. 

Now I don't want to say that Kill Bill Volume 2 is a bad movie, because that's really not the case at all. Its not a bad movie per se. I'm sure if I had watched it after I had given myself a little bit of time to let Kill Bill Vol 1. sit and not cloud my judgement so much I probably would have liked Volume 2 more...

But Tarantino intended for these movies to be one 4 hour long movie and that's how I spent my Saturday and you know what... the second half doesn't really live up to what the first half set up.

In the first Volume, The Bride goes after Vivicia Fox's assassin and O-Ren Ishii. O-Ren is set up as a great villain that could have had the whole 4 hours dedicated to her but instead they had to move onto the honestly not as cool characters left on the assassination team, Michael Madsen and a blonde pirate.

And where the battles between the Bride and the assassins from the first Kill Bill were set up like elegant Samurai epics, the confrontations in Volume 2 were set in a trailer...

Which don't get me wrong, the battle between The Bride and Elle Driver (played by Daryl Hannah) was in close quarters and really fun, especially the end of it. But in retrospect, all the movies fights were kind of sullied by cheap shots at the end and while Volume 2 had a little more humor than the first one, I don't think I needed that humor when I was getting a pretty kickass action flick Tarantino style.

Furthermore, they spent a lot of the movie in China.

A lot of the movie is setting up The Bride's training so she's able to punch her way out of a coffin, lots of build up for one way out (and a cop out which I'll talk about) and a character that really wasn't that entertaining.

Now I'm not sure if there was some reason the character of Pai Mei was such a weird and slightly racist character. I'm sure Tarantino would probably laugh at my ignorance and point so some influence that he pulled from a Japanese movie that makes it okay, or point to the fact that this is an exploitation film and the characters are that way for a reason, I don't care. I get that the movie is ridiculous and a character like this makes sense, I just didn't really like those scenes and I got kind of bored during them, especially since all the pay off for those scenes are Uma Thurman being able to punch her way out of a coffin.

But then we finally got to see Bill (played by David Carradine)

Now the build up for Bill has been huge.

Even in Volume 1. while the focus was on O-Ren and it was fantastic, we kept on hearing the name Bill, we kept on hearing that he was the final boss we were going to get to.

And of course the opening has Uma Thurman talking directly to the camera in a choice that I'm not totally sure Tarantino went with and her final words of that opening monologue are, "I am going to kill Bill". And yeah they're dumb but again, this is a ridiculous movie made for ridiculous purposes and its Tarantino, he's going to do whatever the fuck he wants.

But regardless of how ridiculous things will get, we finally get to see Bill in this movie and...

Again, its a pretty good role for David Carradine, I mean the guy was probably best known for this role and I think for the most part, he did a pretty good job.

It was just the climax of the movie and how it all came together that I think I was a little disappointed with.

I mean especially with the battle with O-Ren in Volume 1. I think I was expecting an awesome even greater duel between Master and Apprentice, jaded lovers.

Instead there's a quick fight with these two basically not getting out of their chairs and... its over.

Its a very short fight and the way she wins is not even that clever. Its kind of funny because its in a way that is so ridiculous and it was alluded to earlier that it was a good way to end the fight, but it just seemed like it ended so quickly that with all the build up, it was just disappointing in my mind.

Now what I will say is that a lot of the charm Bill brings to this movie isn't in his action sequences, they are instead in his dialogue.

Tarantino also really knows how to write dialogue and Bill's speech about Superman is a great speech.

I'm sure defenders of this movie will say that the climax was more of a verbal sparring than it was an actual spar, but to that I say, that's not what we were promised.

We were promised a final show down between these two and we were told that Bill was this bad ass who was going to be the final boss battle we all wanted... and instead it was an interesting conversation, a quick fight, and a cop out move that was only alluded to once earlier in the movie.

And that's what this movie really boils down to. A lot of good dialogue, and a lot of cop out fights. Instead of a fight with Michael Madsen, we get a quick shot gun blast and a snake bite. Elle Driver we get a decent fight in an enclosed space, and Bill we get more verbal sparring than needed and just getting let down by the final fight.

Now the obvious better half of the film is Volume 1. Which doesn't mean that the second part is bad, I would just suggest you let the first half sit for a while, let yourself forget about it a little bit and then watch Volume 2 with lowered expectations.

Some things worth mentioning about Kill Bill is that it is a send up to a lot of foreign films that are really fascinating. Furthermore its just a different type of movie from anything you're used to watching, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. For me it was very good because I was in a mood from Sin City and just wanted to watch that kind of style of movie, but on the flip side of that, you can kind of tell from certain aspects of this movie as a whole, there are shots and choices made just for the sake of being artistic and Tarantino can get his jollies from being different. I'm sure some of it was inspired, but what bothers me about Tarantino is that I feel like he's making films sometimes just to get people talking about it, just for the publicity of being different... but I digress.

I like Kill Bill, especially the first half. I liked it a lot more than I expected to and it might go on the top of my list of Tarantino movies up there with Reservoir Dogs. Its a lot of fun, fun action, acting, great music, and something different from your run of the mill hollywood flick. Definitely worth checking out.

But what do you think of Kill Bill? Comment and Discuss below. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you will get updates on movie news and reviews as well as live tweets of movies and TV shows I'm watching.

I'll leave you with this. Fallout Boy wrote a song called Uma Thurman. What does it have to do with Kill Bill? Not much but its a catchy song and it has the Munsters theme in it... for some reason. Enjoy!