KILL BILL, VOL. 2 (2004)

When we last left The Bride (Uma Thurman), she was feeling victorious but focused on killing Bill (revealed to be David Carradine), the man who orchestrated the massacre of her wedding party and attempted assassination of herself. KILL BILL VOL. 2 starts with The Bride driving a convertible looking and sounding like she’s still focused on her goal of killing Bill to get revenge. She reminisces on her previous actions and says that it was “roaring, rampage, and bloody satisfaction.” Reminding us of the wrongs that were inflicted upon her, the audience is shown a lengthy 15-minute flashback showing the wedding we thought we knew from KILL BILL VOL. 1 in greater detail.

At the wedding, we find out that the massacre happened at a dress rehearsal at which The Bride is shown to be pregnant and content with her life. Bill shows up playing his flute and we see The Bride instantly flounder in her confidence. His presence and tone towards her seem fatherly, but soon we discover he has a mental and emotional dominance over her with a romantic spin. He toys with her wanting her to choose him over Tommy (Chris Nelson), her fiancé, but she chooses to stay with the man with whom she’s happily working and having a child…and soon it’s revealed that Bill already assembled his assassins to commit the massacre that kickstarted the whole bloody affair.

One of the main things about this installment of the KILL BILL tale that differs from the previous film is the overall time spent in flashbacks showing The Bride’s relationship and history with Bill. A stark contrast to The Bride that we’ve come to know as hyper fixated on revenge and as cold as she is dangerous, this film spends a lot of time showing her in love with and wanting to impress Bill while loosely attempting to maintain her self-confidence and worth. The closest callback from the first film would be her hospital stay while comatose following the wedding rehearsal massacre.

During a flashback showing her time with legendary kung fu master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), we start to see him hone her into a highly disciplined fighter through strenuous, demoralizing training that forces her to confront her self-doubt and gain perseverance. Simultaneously with this flashback, we see The Bride at her lowest temporarily when she goes to kill Bill’s brother, Budd (Michael Madsen) and gets shot and buried alive in a grave marked Paula Schulz. Remembering Pai Mei’s lessons, she punches her way out of her coffin and makes her way back to Budd’s trailer where he’s just been killed by Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) fittingly by a Black Mamba (The Bride’s codename) she hid in the suitcase of cash she promised him for killing The Bride (AKA Beatrix Kiddo as we learn from Elle’s phone conversation with Bill).

After intense hand-to-hand combat between Elle and The Bride, Elle reveals that she killed Pai Mei shortly after he plucked one of her eyes out. The Bride then returns the favor by plucking her other eye out during their short sword battle and leaves her in Budd’s trailer screeching in pain. Watching this scene midway through the movie felt like the reward for the seemingly large backslide in character development The Bride displayed throughout the beginning.

Understandably, director Quentin Tarantino wanted to show The Bride with a major struggle during her revenge quest, which felt like the point of her character’s arc throughout the first half of the movie. The reward of being patient through watching flashbacks of her pining for attention and acceptance from the men around her was the fierce return of The Bride and her calmly fatalistic disposition after literally clawing her way out of a grave towards rebirth.

The Bride tracks Bill down to his home, ready to exact the revenge she so desperately fought for and deserved…only to find Bill and her daughter B.B. waiting with water guns to play with her. Immediately, The Bride breaks down crying and plays along with their fake shootout in shock. She ends up spending the night absentmindedly observing B.B. and Bill interact and fill her in on some smaller events in their day-to-day. It’s incredibly clear to the audience that The Bride is torn about this revelation and her “revenge quest” evolves into a quest to protect her daughter from her former life and build a better future for them, which evolves The Bride into a highly-skilled, protective mother from the cold, calculated vengeance warrior we previously followed.

During their sitdown, Bill toys with The Bride by offering to swordfight under a full moon on the beach outside his hacienda but shoots at her when she lunges for his sword. After being shot with a truth serum dart, The Bride is trembling from both the pain of the dart in her thigh and anger at not being able to take Bill down as fast as she wants after everything she’s put herself through to get the opportunity. Bill tries to break her down mentally by telling her that she wore a disguise of Arlene Plympton while she is the renegade killer Beatrix Kiddo and that she cannot separate what she is from who she wants to be.

One of the most poignant lines from both KILL BILL movies comes after the flashback showing when The Bride found out she was pregnant: “Before that strip turned blue…I was a woman, your woman…but once that strip turned blue, I could no longer [be] any of those things…I was going to be a mother…,” giving us the reason her priorities changed. Once Bill took that dream from her, she became hellbent on avenging both her daughter and her lost motherhood. With her strength and resolve, The Bride kills Bill after an all-too-brief struggle and using the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique secretly taught to her by Pai Mei.

Beatrix immediately tears up and calls herself a bad person for not telling Bill that she learned the technique.

She laughs at some of Bill’s dying words and they seemingly reconcile with her covering his hand with her own and helping him make his peace before dying, only for her to drop the act as soon as his body drops dead on his lawn and driving off with B.B. into the night.

It was nice seeing the overall journey of The Bride through both KILL BILL films, in retrospect, it felt like the second movie was the most transformative for her character development in allowing her to finally have peace by realizing her dream of getting her daughter back and killing Bill. She had clear struggles at the beginning of the movie which felt like she was starting all over, but allowed her to rise from her grave remembering who she truly was and giving her the renewed resolve to control her emotions while being vulnerable, overcome her physical shortcomings, and embrace the end of her journey and the start of a new one alongside her daughter. This character saw many ups and downs throughout the duology she headed, but in the end, she not only came out on top of all the bodies she felled but had her even bigger prize, in the end, her daughter.

KILL BILL VOL. 2 is currently streaming on HBO Max and available for rent/purchase on most digital platforms.