April 14, 2004

Why is Kill Bill, Volume 2 the most shocking film in years?

Because it is probably the greatest sucker bet for film critics in years.

Sadly, it may well become the ultimate "who can you really trust" document for many, many viewers who choose to buy into the crap that has been spewed in advance reviews.

Simply put, as a stand alone movie, this is easily the lamest writing in the history of Tarantino's career, offering one slightly interesting idea about Superman's psyche that may make for good post-theater discussion, but is not particularly well written. In fact, as the Volume of Kill Bill that is meant to be the chatty, dialogue-driven half of this bloated thing, it is notable for not offering even a single repeatable piece of dialogue in it's 127 running time that is more padded in more ways than Martin Lawrence in Big Momma's House.

You can try to turn this turd into a fudgicle if you like. I had a post-game chat with one smart guy who liked the movie in context of the first film. And indeed, one film, which is all there really was here, would surely have been better. Instead, what you get is the action-packed first half, which will trick some audiences into thinking that Volume Two is worth paying for, if only for some cool action. And if they sleep through Volume Two, which is more than a little bit possible, they may believe that they experienced something worthwhile. But they would be wrong.

I hardly know where to start writing about this movie, since in reality, there are fewer highlights than I can count on one hand. David Carradine is, simply, terrible. He can't handle the dialogue and his laconic pace turns what might have been somewhat compelling into an afternoon stuck with your sickly grandparents. (He is a little better in the final scenes he is in.) Michael Madsen's character is never quite as interesting as his plastic surgery. (He looks pretty good… for Tom Sizemore.) Daryl Hannah still can't act much. And Uma Thurman just isn't as cool as she was in the first piece, in great part because she is mostly a victim in this volume.

Worse, the great Robert Richardson, who deserved an Oscar nomination for the first film, is reduced to "so what?" status. The music, original and classic hits, is unmemorable. Sally Menke cuts this at a pace that could make a snail shout, "Come on… move along!" They should patent whatever machine they built that sucked every frame of footage off the cutting room floor and through it on screen, even if we were seeing the same thing for the third, fourth or fifth time.

But the real shock is the dialogue. The shock is the absolute nothing of it all. In the first half, there were at least a dozen memorable things to walk away from, whether you liked the movie or not. The fight in the garden, the fight with the Krazy 88, the suburban fight interrupted by the innocent child, Lucy Liu on the table, the animated segment, the feet, the attempted hospital rape, the yellow motorcycle in the Japanese streets, etc. Here, if seeing Gordon Liu wearing a white wig makes you moist, I guess you can take that away. There is a body part that gets squished. And there is a mid-fight exchange that is little more than a pale reference back to the Vernita Green kitchen fight, though it is probably the single best sustained written sequence of the film. But not great… and that's pretty much it.

And this film cheats the audience over and over. The Kill Bill, Volume 2 answer to the Krazy 88 fight in Volume 1 would be to have Uma confronted with all of these people and then to have an earthquake kill them all before the could fight.

You'll read a lot of tap dancing in the reviews for this film. The answer to why is simple. Critics desperately want to keep the Tarantino train going and will suckle whatever bosom he offers, no matter how sour or unfilling the milk.

The result are some truly idiotic comments, like "Daryl Hannah's Elle Driver, who almost makes one forget Charlize Theron's Oscar-snagging turn as Eileen Wuornos in Monster."

Or "Here's a movie that both academics bundled in film theories and teenagers on hot dates will find supercool."

Or "The comic book frivolity of Volume 1 is carried into this second installment but deftly counterbalanced by an operatic pathos that makes this one of the most heart-poundingly visceral movies ever made."

Or "With Kill Bill, both volumes, he wants to take us on a wild ride into the dirty fun of movies and do it so artfully that we want to return to the film to shake out its secrets. It's a bold swing, and Tarantino knocks it out of the park."

Never let it be said that I refused equal time to utter critic-wanking bullshit.

Of course, my passion about this film is high because I am so stunned by the utter nothingness of it all. And the extreme cynicism. Kill Bill, which should have been a movie of just over two hours in any sane world, became two films because it was so far over budget. And here is what they did… they took the hot action sequences, without bothering to offer much context, and put them in "Volume 1," creating a fan base that would come to Volume 2's opening weekend expecting more heat… and would get two hours of mediocre chat. (The dialogue is not even on the level of Scott Rosenberg or bad Carrie Fisher, much less good Tarantino.) The first film actually held up okay at the box office because kids wanted to go back for the action. But there is so little action here and so much waiting, while actors speak with the slow pretentiousness of collegiate Shakespeare, Miramax is unlike to do any better than to double their opening box office, whatever that is.

I'm sorry to feel so strongly about this and I am even more sorry that a reader predicted a negative review by me for this film a few weeks ago. I really, really, really wanted to like this one. And the unanimity of the reviews that are out made me hopeful. But there is one word that I have never been able to use for a film that QT wrote ever before… boring. This film isn't boring because it is talky. It's boring because nothing is being said and in the end, all that is left is the cheapest sentimentality possible. There are no other Tarantino films from which I cannot recite multiple chunks of dialogue by memory. Here, I defy anyone who sees it to repeat one. You will hear people talking about the Superman speech. But really, in the opening sequence of Reservoir Dogs, QT did a much better job of dissecting pop culture from a skewed viewpoint in half the time and twice as memorably. It doesn't help that once the idea of the Superman speech gets over, the idea is then repeated twice again, like everything else in this film. And more to the point, people referring to the speech will not, you'll find, offer chucks of dialogue, but try to explain the idea behind the speech. BZZT! We all lose!

I am not being facetious when I say that I would prefer most genre fluff to this pretentious choke job. Having QT "present" Hero, now that I have seen this, is a spectacular insult to Zhang Yimou, a director who offers more in one sequence of Hero than QT manages in both Kill Bills combined. Somehow, Hero is meant to be infinitely more pretentious, but Volume 2 beats it by a country mile. Remember when Quentin had a sense of humor about himself? You and I both! If only Quentin did.

But don't tell the other critics. They are busy chewing Quentin's cud.

E ME: Kill Dave, Volume 2