Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
The Bride unwaveringly continues on her roaring rampage of revenge against the band of assassins who had tried to kill her and her unborn child. She visits each of her former associates one-by-one, checking off the victims on her Death List Five until there's nothing left to do … but kill Bill.
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21 films that influenced Kill Bill: Vol. 2
What critics say influenced Kill Bill: Vol. 2
I also like the little visual nods to other films: The New York Times highlighted a shot where Thurman is framed in a doorway with the desert outside as a steal from The Searchers, but I preferred the elliptical composition that defines the widescreen frame as The Bride finally confronts Bill at home, which I can imagine as a subtle, almost subliminal reference to the graveyard gunfight at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The new film’s most indelible element is its hokey rear-projected opening, in which The Bride brings us up to date on Vol. 1, which Tarantino follows with a similarly black and white flashback of the events that led up to the massacre that left Thurman’s character for dead — images that evoke John Ford’s The Searchers one minute and Sergio Leone’s funereal-paced Westerns the next.
This sequence is also in black and white and references Ford's "The Searchers" as the heavily pregnant bride (really doing a full dress rehearsal we learn) finds Bill playing the flute on the chapel porch.
The white-clad Bride peers ruefully through the chapel door to the wilderness beyond, no doubt pondering her bartered freedom, and the image reverses Ethan Edwardss looking in at the end of The Searchers.
Cinemaphiles will have a field day dissecting which movies Tarantino has lifted from, referenced, and paid homage to in Kill Bill Vol 2. Ever since film critics cried foul over his alleged cribbing of the Reservoir Dogs heist plot from Ringo Lams obscure Chinese actioner City on Fire, viewers have delighted in determining the inspirations for the directors subsequent films, scenes, and characters.
"The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz", in which our heroine is placed in a seemingly inescapable situation by Budd, comes off as a nod to the works of legendary Italian director Lucio Fulci in the way it deploys sadism, obsessive close-ups of eyeballs and shots that uncannily echo the key scene of "City of the Living Dead".
When the vengeful Bride (Uma Thurman) squares off against fellow assassin Ellie Driver (Daryl Hannah) in the cramped confines of a mobile home, the mayhem is right up there with the Sean Connery/Robert Shaw train-compartment slugfest in “From Russia With Love.”
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He gives physicality to his role that is reminiscent of Joel Grey’s fabulous Korean master, Chiun, in the underrated “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins” mixed with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
And while making light of some elements, he also infuses a high degree of authenticity: shooting the film in Beijing, hiring famed choreographers Sonny Chiba ("The Streetfighter") and Master Yuen Woo-ping ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), using a combination of Chinese, Japanese, and American production designers, and incorporating influential music from The RZA, a hip hop producer inspired by the sounds of the Orient.
(One is reminded of the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail": Apparently, when you're The Bride, a shotgun blast to the chest is merely a flesh wound.)
("Kung Fu" star Carradine used it in his Bruce Lee collaboration, "Circle of Iron.")
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Yet appreciating Tarantino’s numerous nods to spaghetti Western masters doesn’t mean one has to enjoy them, and mimicking both Ennio Moriccone’s iconic theme and Peter Fonda’s mysterious walk across the desert from Once Upon A Time in the West merely highlights how soulless the Kill Bill saga is in comparison to its illustrious source material.
Evoking films ranging from Sergio Leones The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to the Shaw Brothers Hong Kong classic Executioners from Shaolin, the sequence condenses years of character development and ill-fated love into a desperate few minutes of gasping and struggling in a sealed coffin.