KILL BILL VOLUME TWO

Director/writer Quentin Tarantino brings his loving, epic homage to/recreation of low-budget exploitation movies of yore to a suitably sweeping climax in KILL BILL VOL. 2. After all the frenetic, deliberately over the top action of KILL BILL VOL. 1, it's something of a surprise that VOL. 2 is much more focused on characterization and verbal confrontation. The new film has its knock-down, bloody brawls, but it goes from stark revenge fantasy to something much more fluid and human, in the process giving David Carradine one of his best roles ever.

Uma Thurman is back as The Bride, aka Black Mamba, once a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, presided over by Bill, aka Snake Charmer (Carradine). In the first film, we see the pregnant Bride shot in the head by Bill at her wedding (we learn here it's the wedding rehearsal), spending four years in a coma and waking up understandably angry and bent on revenge upon Bill and his cohorts. In VOL. 1, the Bride takes out Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) and Tokyo Yakuza queen O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). Still on her list in VOL. 2 are Bill's ne'er-do-well younger brother Budd (Michael Madsen), the hostile, one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and of course Bill himself. Along the way here, we learn how the Bride became the deadly force she is today (she trained with a brilliant, if impossibly grouchy, martial arts master, played with twinkly malice by Gordon Liu), what really happened at the wedding rehearsal where so many lives were lost and what's really between the Bride and Bill. Things don't go exactly as the Bride expects, in part because we know what she doesn't her child is still alive.

KILL BILL VOL. 2 has a wonderful sense of range to it. Tarantino isn't afraid to play with any number of quick and dirty film effects, much beloved of everyone who remembers racing out to see the exuberant and improbable action movies of yore that were made on a dime, yet when he gets into straight human interaction, it's as complicated and soulful as anything out there except that he always holds out the possibility that violence can erupt at any moment in the sad, lovelorn, articulate exchanges. Thurman is absolutely convincing as a weapon in human form who aches, bleeds, rages and mourns, while Carradine mixes menace, regret and rueful humor in ways that make Bill almost as iconic as his lover/nemesis. Hannah and Madsen are terrific, and Tarantino stalwart Samuel L. Jackson turns up in a small role as the church organist at the fatal wedding rehearsal.

KILL BILL VOL. 2 feels a bit odd rhythmically taken as a whole, the saga has most of its big physical setpieces in VOL. 1, so that we're braced, at least initially, for a different type of experience. Perhaps the unexpected nature of VOL. 2 gives it added potency it encompasses so many different moods and textures that all flow together that it feels at the end as though we've been given both a brief history of the exploitation subgenre and a remarkably strong, memorable emotional experience that is generally associated with another type of filmmaking entirely. KILL BILL VOL. 2 isn't everything to everybody, but it comes a lot closer than most films do on that score while maintaining Tarantino's singular vision throughout.