Cady's Take:

We open on The Bride driving a convertible. She tells us she is on her way to kill Bill. Then we have a full-length replay of what led up to the massacre of the wedding party, shot in crystalline black and white.

As in the first film, the Bride is on a mission of vengeance after being shot and left for dead. A roaring rampage of revenge, if you will. Uma has set her sights on the remaining members of Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad: trailer-trashy Budd (Michael Madsen) and the venomous Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah).

2 is more character driven and has less action. It fleshes the Bride out, giving her a name and exploring her disturbing relationship with Bill, the father of the daughter she thought she lost in the massacre. Tarantino seems to savor this film quite a bit more.

There's an amazing sequence where Uma gets buried alive, you can feel her fear and the audio mixing of the dirt hitting her coffin is amazing. Also particularly enjoyable is an extended flashback sequence in which The Bride learns martial arts from an ancient Chinese master, which is shot in the cheesy, zoom-in, zoom-out style of so many Hong Kong flicks of the 1970s.

At times "Vol. 2" feels like a cross-country run, with hills and long stretches of flatland. But overall, better than the first and a great weekend rental!

I can honestly say that “Kill Bill Vol. 2” kept me on the edge of my seat. “Volume 2” is the fulfillment of the promises made in “Volume 1” – we find out The Bride’s name (Beatrix Kiddo), why Bill tries to kill Beatrix (betrayal, of course), and we also get to spend some time with characters we only briefly encountered before. We meet Budd and Elle, Bill’s siblings and “list mates”. Budd (Michael Madsen) has an intense scene with The Bride where he gives her the choice of being buried alive and maced blind, or buried alive with a flashlight. While there is a great deal of violence, the scariest sequences are the quietest ones like this, where we only have to imagine what could happen or what is almost about to happen.

I wish I had gotten to see more of Elle (Daryl Hannah). She and The Bride are mortal enemies and when Elle goes toe to toe (literally) with Beatrix her facial expression changes slightly this way, and then that way, and then this way again…it was perfect.

Another wonderful chapter involves Beatrix’s training with Pei Mei, played by Gordon Liu. A white haired martial arts master who lives atop a mountain, he brutalizes his student and embodies just about every martial arts movie my father ever made me sit through on a Saturday afternoon. Tarantino loves martial arts movies to an almost unhealthy degree I think, but his affection is clear in his attention to detail. I can’t imagine how this movie looks to a true kung-fu movie lover.

The movie does culminate with the battle of Beatrix Kiddo and Bill (David Carradine). As I said earlier, the best confrontations are the quiet ones and both the audience and Beatrix are surprised at her final encounter with Bill. This is the best chapter in the movie by far and if you can sit through some of the more gruesome turns, the payoff is worth the wait.