This time, 'Kill Bill' offers more with gore

True to the words of its loquacious auteur, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is a "spaghetti western with an Eastern influence" - the flipside of the filmmaker's Vol. 1, which he dubbed "an eastern" with spaghetti western overtones.

The second half of his epic revenge fable - with the strapping, stupendous Uma Thurman as a steely soul on the hunt for the folks who had left her for dead - kicks off with a flashback to the dusty, two-bit Texas wedding chapel where all of the bad, bloody business began. There's the brutalized beauty in her wedding gown, in the happy - and then ominous - minutes before she's mowed down alongside her friends, her fiance, and even the priest who was going to administer the vows.

Tarantino's terrific pastiche cuts from this gruesome rendezvous and heads off (in time and in space) to a trailer nestled in the buttes of Barstow, Calif., and then to a climactic face-off in a Mexican hideaway. Nobody rides a horse, but Michael Madsen, as the titular Bill's brother, Budd, wears a cowboy hat, and the movie teems with the sort of scratchy-beard villainy that was a trademark of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2 arrives in theaters six months after its sibling (and conveniently, for those in need of a refresher course, three days after Vol. 1's DVD release). It is the more satisfying of the two installments - less over-the-top, arterial-gushing violence and more investigation into character, motives, back-story. To be sure, there's plenty of gore and dismemberment to go around, but after Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, even Tarantino-brand bloodshed seems tame.

It still may not be possible to relate to the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad - of which Thurman's "Black Mamba," a.k.a. The Bride, belonged - as anything approaching real people. But in the exploitation/comic-book/chopsocky universe that Tarantino inhabits, the DiVAS' rivalries and allegiances begin, in Vol. 2, to make sense.

And Bill - the sugar-daddy pimpmeister boss of said contract-killing organization - finally gets his screen time. The Bride's single-minded sojourn through a torturous tableau has but one ultimate goal: to take the life of the man who just about took hers, and took her baby, still in her womb.

David Carradine, toting a giant bamboo flute like the one he used in the '70s TV hit Kung Fu, is that man. With his crosshatched, handsome mug, the veteran actor plays The Bride's one-time mentor, lover and boss with a glinting, wily eye. He gets to deliver a couple of signature Tarantino pontifications, including a discourse on Superman and the caped Kryptonian's take on the failings of humankind.

And there's a wonderful chapter - Chapter 8: "The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei" - which begins with Bill depositing his frisky assassin-in-training at the house of a master warrior, where Thurman's character (her real name isn't revealed until late in the game) undergoes a humbling regimen of martial arts and sword play. Charismatic Hong Kong star Gordon Liu, bewigged and be-bearded, plays the sage teacher Pai Mei with a barking good humor and gymnastic grace.

Jumbling the years as if he were shuffling cards, Tarantino sends his stoic star through tests and trials on her way to the big confrontation with Bill. Daryl Hannah is back as the eye-patched Elle Driver, ready to finish the job she started - fleetingly - in Vol. 1. Their meeting is a catfight of nuclear proportions. And Madsen, exuding the whiskey-soaked fatalism of a Peckinpah (anti-)hero, hasn't been this good since he played Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.

Ultimately Kill Bill is silly stuff - but it's transcendental silliness. Tarantino isn't swimming in deep waters, he's paddling through a multiplex's worth of pop influences: Japanese anime, Chinese martial-arts mayhem, American B-movies, Italian-style oaters, cartoons, film noir. It's been said before about Tarantino, and he's said it himself: It's all about the movies.

Kill Bill is all homage, all the time.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynew.com.

Kill Bill, Vol. 2

*** 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Lawrence Bender, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, photography by Robert Richardson, music by The RZA and Robert Rodriguez, distributed by Miramax Films.

Running time: 2 hours, 16 mins.

The Bride. . . Uma Thurman

Bill. . . David Carradine

Pei Mai. . . Gordon Liu

Budd. . . Michael Madsen

Elle Driver. . . Daryl Hannah

Parent's guide: R (violence, profanity, adult themes)

Playing at: area theaters