One of the coolest and easily the most fun things to do in movies is to take inspiration from classic non-familiar styles and use them in something years later, creating something that has inklings of familiarity, but still be able to feel different because of how much its presentation and components feel so dissimilar to most of modern cinema. Styles like this included grind house cinema, martial arts films, blaxploitation films, spaghetti westerns, etc, and each of these have their own classic films that people may be aware of, but it’d be hard to find a casual film-goer who would be able to list off examples from each. That’s where the bizarre director himself, Quentin Tarantino stepped up to the plate, where during the production of arguably his most infamous film, Pulp Fiction, in 1994, he and starring actress Uma Thurman created the idea to make a film all about a bride out for revenge on a group who were responsible for killing her family and almost killing her. Through years of work, the movie, Kill Bill Volume I was released in theatres in 2003, with the follow up Volume II released in 2004 six months after the first film. Waking up from a coma after being left for dead, a woman simply known as The Bride (played by Uma Thurman) discovers that the people who put her in this four-year sleep were none other than her old teammates; including Vernita Green (played by Vivica A. Fox), O-Ren Ishii (played by Lucy Liu), Budd (played by Michael Madsen) Elle Driver (played by Daryl Hannah) and the leader of the group, the bride’s past love, Bill (played by David Carradine). Armed with an immaculately crafted Katana and plenty of martial art’s experience, The Bride sets out to take down her old teammates one by one those who have wronged her and finally reach her ultimate goal, killing Bill. The film proved to be highly successful for Tarantino, being his highest grossing film up until that point with both collectively earning a total of $332 million against what would’ve been a $60 million budget (if you pair them both together). Volume I is packed with amazingly tight yet concise pacing, great cinematography and call-backs to classic filmmaking, amazing acting from practically everybody, and an amazing climax, but bizarrely Volume II slows down a lot with a meaningless and dull opening, and a somewhat underwhelming finale, resulting in a very mixed viewing experience when you watch them back to back.

The film was split into two films as a way for Tarantino to tell a good majority of the story he hoped to create, resulting in the overall total running time of this story being about four hours in length. It takes heavy inspiration from several different film styles that have already been listed such as various martial arts films, westerns, exploitation films, etc, and each one work wonderfully with the film’s main theme of revenge and its process of one-by-one elimination. Volume I does a wonderful job setting up everything in a surprisingly smooth way. While the film is still over two hours long, every scene is paced, acted and directed with such care and detail that it immediately engages the audience and keeps them invested all the way through. There’s an appreciated feeling of simplistic storytelling going on in this film, where the details are explained but not dived into, whilst the emotions being felt are really what drives the film and it does a fantastic job at sucking you in and making you root for this woman to get her revenge. The staging for every scene is very-well handled, the switch in styles between black and white to sometimes even animation is not too distracting, and the climax is very impressive. The final battle with Lucy Liu’s character in a Tokyo restaurant is amazing to witness and clearly shows all the effort that went into it. While the first section does a fantastic job handling its story, Volume II sadly does not hold up as well as its previous. While nothing is truly terrible, it goes from a fast-paced movie with relevant scenes that help further the story, fleshing out important elements and building up wonderfully until the final battle, to a more slow-paced experience that features a ton of scenes that add nothing but shock value and proceed to drag the film out needlessly for an extra hour. While the confrontation with Bill at the end has a nice twist and the actors work great off each other, for what it was building up, there is a strong lack of spectacle that is lost after the amazing final to the first volume.

Most of the characters have a very similar set-up and build-up to traditional westerns or samurai movies; most with good backstory and visual identities that helps them stand out as characters without even knowing much about them. The Bride is a pretty fun lead; with her brutal assassin like attitude mixed occasionally with the true humanity broken by a normal woman and bride coming through is a nice touch and Uma Thurman is very good in the role, being able to capture both sides quite flawlessly. The main five bad guys suffer a similar problem to how the story is handled from Volume I to II, anyone featured in I is very interesting and cool, and anyone featured in Volume II is pretty boring and extremely unlikeable in the wrong way. Vivica A Fox is pretty cool in her short amount of time and Lucy Liu is easily the best villain of the set, with a great backstory, fighting style, personality, intimidation, and fight scene. Daryl Hannah was on the right track in the first film, but nothing really comes of her and she just gets forgotten about by Volume II’s end (the change in quality in particularly evident with her as she’s featured in both section and something feels off once she returns in the second part). Michael Madsen is one of the reasons Volume II falls flat: his portion of the film is needlessly long, boring, uninteresting, pointless, and incredibly simplistic and lazy compared to everything else that was build up. Also, his character is a standard Texas trope and his acting is nothing special either, easily the worst part of the films. David Carradine as Bill acts his parts pretty well and even has a nice scene between him and the bride by the end of Volume II, but for the intimidation and presence that was built up for him over the two parts, he’s nowhere near as impressive and dies way too easily.

The film was pointed out as being very similar to the 1973 Japanese film, Lady Snowblood and the 1968 French film, The Bride Wore Black, which both feature a woman vowing revenge on a group that wronged her in the past through excessive violence. This film contains a lot of elements that were clearly inspired by several different pieces of work; allowing the film to contain remarkably different elements that nicely fit together in a nice obscure film. The animated segment involving Lucy Liu’s past was inspired by an Indian serial killer movie named Aalavandhan, the climactic battle of Volume  I is based on a real life Tokyo restaurant named the Gonpachi Nishi-Azabu, and even The Bride’s yellow tracksuit, helmet and motorcycle are clearly in reference to the famous tracksuit Bruce Lee wore in his film, Game of Death. While they could easily feel like flat-out rip-offs, Tarantino clearly has a love for cinema and he always brings his own form of chaotic sparkle in his projects to make them feel like their own, with the production design by Yôhei Taneda, Jiuping Cao and David Wasco, the costume design by Kumiko Ogawa and Catherine Marie-Thomas, and even camera work clearly emulate each respective genre without ever fully copying from them. This aspect of incorporating elements from other styles of film features into the action as well. The action in the film is very well choreographed and staged yet still feels slightly different from typical action due to martial arts tropes included like over-the-top stunts and weightless jumps. The cinematography by Robert Richardson manages to get across a lot through very little; many of the shots can come across as pretty simplistic and even the aspect ratios being altered doesn’t change too much but with how the scenes are set-up and paced out, it manages to get across a lot of emotion and tension through the simplistic framing. Volume II does not feature as many interesting angles, variety or even that many fight scenes which is a pretty big downgrade and even if this was an intended idea (like Part I had so much overblown fights scene and featured a sense of power fantasy for Part II to bring it back down to cold hard reality), it could’ve been handled in a much better way.

Kill Bill creates a strange situation where it becomes hard to effectively rank it. On the one hand. Volume I has a lot of good stuff to offer up; great acting, simple yet effective storytelling, interesting shots, engaging fight scenes, fun villains and an amazing finale. It is a great movie that shows off a lot of Tarantino’s style while also paying tribute to tons of others from various cultures and time periods. With that said, Volume II does not feel necessary despite the fact that it acts as the conclusion to the overall story. Everything is scaled down from the first film and replaced with very little material that is anywhere near as strong; the story is slower, the characters are less interesting, the shots aren’t as memorable, the fight scenes are limited, it doesn’t stand out nearly as much, and its an underwhelming conclusion to a great film. Watching them separately, Volume I is definitely worth a watch while Volume II is only worth it if you want to see her actually Kill Bill. A movie that’s split right down the middle in terms of quality, stay for the beginning and maybe stay for the other half, check it out and have a slicing good time.

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