I was disappointed. I still liked it overall, but to me it didn’t seem as much resolving the first movie as deflating it. Sure, there was so much energy and imagination and just reckless do-whatever’s-cool-by-any-means-necessary in the first, that some of that naturally spilled over into the second. But the first threw out so many references and gags and flourishes and just plain cool scenes that it seemed like it was going to explode, while the second just felt like they had a couple of cool ideas that they needed to stretch out into an over-long movie.
Maybe they had to pad it out to justify splitting the thing into two parts? That’s the more charitable explanation; the cynical part of me thinks that QT got too cocky and wanted to have both an orgy of B-movie cliches and references and action sequences and he wanted to “say something.”
Great stuff:
[ul]
[li] The Hong Kong shaky-zoom into Pai Mei’s face throughout the training sequence. In fact, all of the cinematography in those sequences were just perfect – the flashbacks with Elle, shooting The Bride’s training through the holes Pai Mei had punched through the wood, etc. Plus the sound effects in those scenes were perfect.[/li][li] Putting the training sequence in the middle of the buried-alive sequence; it kept it from being a disjointed flashback (that obviously was essential to the movie because it was cool) and made it all flow together.[/li][li] The shot of The Bride’s feet headed towards Elle.[/li][li] The whole fight scene with Elle. Again, the SFX were astoundingly good – the whole thing just sounded loud and painful.[/li][li] The SFX as The Bride is being buried alive.[/li][li] The Bride entering the cafe and asking for a glass of water.[/li][li] The chair fight with Bill. I honestly expected a showdown on the beach in the moonlight, so I was surprised when the fight actually began and ended so quickly. Of course, that’s the way samurai movies do it.[/li][li] Showing Bill dead in the closing credits.[/li][li] The prologue (from the trailer), with The Bride’s rear-projection driving monologue.[/li][li] The Bride’s death scene when she gets shot by B.B.[/li][li] The Bride’s scene in the bathroom at the end of the movie.[/li][/ul]
What I didn’t like:
[ul]
[li] Budd should’ve been killed by The Bride, not Elle. We should’ve had a shot of The Bride “targeting” Budd with the Ironside theme, instead of all the failed ninja stuff. Then, instead of waiting for Budd to be killed by the black mamba villain, we should’ve seen Elle leave him for dead, get taken care of by The Bride, and then The Bride kill Budd. What kind of revenge story lets other characters do the main character’s dirty work?[/li][li] The movie needed some serious editing. The scene at the church at the beginning was way, way overlong. (Its originally being intended as one movie doesn’t excuse this; they had time to edit Vol 2 long after they’d decided to do it in two parts). So was the scene at the strip club where Budd worked, and so was Bill’s speech(es) at the end.[/li][li] The scene with the Mexican pimp was completely superfluous. It said nothing about the characters that couldn’t have been covered elsewhere, and the character itself wasn’t interesting enough to deserve a whole scene (unlike Pai Mei, or Honzo, etc.)[/li][li] Some of the scenes with Uma Thurman just reminded me that she’s not a very good actress. Overall, she’s just great in a part like this, but then the script called for her to show some variety/progression to her character – in particular, when she was playing the younger version of herself about to start her training under Pai Mei. It was all “I am acting like a naive young woman” instead of feeling as natural as the rest of the movie.[/li][li] I suppose it’s a nitpick, but the film noir style of the prologue and the credits just felt out of place with the rest of the movie. If there had been a chapter told in that style, before the thing turned into a western, it would’ve fit. Or, if the opening had been done in the style of a spaghetti western or a 70’s exploitation movie, it would’ve fit. As it was, it seemed like they tried to throw one too many film homages in and it finally backfired on them.[/li][li] I saw the snake in the briefcase coming a mile away. (Although I did at first think it was going to be a bomb.)[/li][li] Elle’s line suggesting an honor/respect among assassins was totally out of place. It was shown several times that she had no honor – she was perfectly ready to kill The Bride in her sleep, and she poisoned Pai Mei.[/li][/ul]
Well, then maybe you should deign to “explain” it to us. I would say just the opposite; anyone who thinks that the dialogue was all justified isn’t really “getting” Tarantino’s movies. In fact, I have to wonder if Tarantino “gets” Tarantino’s movies.
The guy has his strengths, and he has them in spades. He knows movies. He sure as hell knows how to film action sequences. He knows how to use violence in different ways – for laughs as well as for genuine dramatic effect. He knows how to break a story apart and put it back together in a more interesting order. He knows how to imagine scenes that are still shocking and surprising to even the most jaded audiences.
But he doesn’t know how to write dialogue. He comes up with some great lines, but he won’t stop there. He’s not as bad as Kevin Smith, but it’s the same type of thing – you have to know when to stop. You have to know how to edit out what doesn’t belong. The Superman speech, for example, didn’t say anything that couldn’t have been said just as effectively in about 2 minutes.
