Disappointment rarely comes straight away. It creeps, next day, until you realise the film you saw which you thought was pretty good was actually pretty rubbish. It is even worse when that film also inflicts a retro malaise upon a film you previously really liked. Of course I can only be talking about Kill Bill Vol.2.
Volume One was a gas. Both in sixties hipster slang way and it its utter fly away lack of substance. Volume Two promised the meat, it promised the plot and it also promised three more fights. In almost all areas it let me down. While Volume One seemed utterly consistent in its ragbag of styles, visually sumptuous and coreographed to the last inch, Volume Two seemed sloppy. We find out why The Bride was shot. We find out why she is so good at fighting. We find out why Darryl Hannah wears an eye-patch. And we even find out The Bride’s name.
Finding out The Bride’s name is a mistake. Not as much as the fantastically lousy reason why the Bride was shot. And whilst a fair bit of explaining goes on, a fair bit is left out. The Deadly Viper Assassin’s, so what did they do then? Why does everyone hate Bill? You cannot explain a bit and leave the rest out for mystery purposes. And in retrospect from a pacing point of view, the revelation of the final minute of Volume One completely spoils what appears to be set up as a twist in this one. The division of the film harmed the whole. Though on the other hand it at least gave us a near perfect Volume One, which, by the laws of sequels (if you see it as a sequel) Volume Two fails to live up to.
Of course KBV2 it has its moments. The Pei-Mei sequence is great fun, as is the Thurman / Hannah fight. BUt at two hours fifteen, there is much which could be snipped and the film still feels a touch unfinished. And two credit sequences?
Yeah, I guess this is called disappointment.