Kill Bill volume 2 doesn't disappoint. Bill goes the way of the dodo, a fate not so easily achieved given the Jet Li vehicle "Romeo Must Die" where he neither dies nor gets the girl. Still others may be disappointed for the very reason that it doesn't disappoint. Namely, in volume 2, the fighting stops and the drama begins. Much like watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there is a constant anticipation of action and when it arrives, there is a release. But volume 2 rarely indulges its audience in spectacle, and it traces the emotional lives of its characters instead. The legendary El Paso Wedding Chapel Massacre is all dialogue and no massacre. This is not a disappointment because volume 1 had already taken the sensory overload of dismemberment to a T. Volume 2 scales it back, showing that Tarantino had a plan to titillate more than the eyes and ears. Indeed, much of volume 2 is not about overload but deprivation. Uma Thurman's journey to the grave is essentially a pitch black screen and some sound effects. Much of the film is bathed in silence, an extension of the melancholy which engulfs its characters. You see it in Bud's dejected walk back to his trailer from a demeaning day at work. You see it in Pai Mei's calm but lonely meditative stance in his outdoor pad. You see it in the Bride's teary eyes which bespeak courage and heartbreak. Uma Thurman standing in the doorway of her wedding chapel, shot in Civil War black and white, could easily have come from a John Ford film.

The performances benefit from roles that not only literally kick ass but also are very actorly. Lines are delivered with aplomb, and sentence structures are elongated with prepositional phrases to give emphasis and to create tension. Note the way a gunfight standoff becomes a moment for drama, not action, because of the language. David Carradine returns to his Kung Fu roots looking like a piece of granite and talking like a shaman mixed with a deep voiced trailer announcer. Far from the master killer he is, Carradine is an evocative storyteller, a flautist, and a child's playmate. Michael Madsen injects his doltish bravura with an edgy tenderness not seen since Thelma and Louise. Uma Thurman returns for another great performance in a role so full of range that even watching her drive a car for five minutes in the credits is alluring.

Once again Tarantino wears his influences on his sleeve although here the martial arts madness is limited to two scenes which make them feel silly compared to the rest of the stately movie. Gordon Liu plays the master role, coming full circle from his star-making role as a student in "The 36 Chambers of Shaolin." With excessive zooms, obligatory fondling of his white beard, and bad subtitles, there is no doubt that Tarantino is aping Shaw Brothers films. But even these moments of comic relief pay off dramatically, which is the biggest strength of Kill Bill. There are lessons learned. The attention to detail coheres where the indulgent detail in Eternal Sunshine fell apart without much of a payoff.

Kill Bill is a film to see again and again for its detail. The texture of this creation was made with an appreciation for the space of performance, a zone which directors must close off for their actors to feel safe to explore. In its revelling of artifice, Kill Bill feels like a film from the Golden Age, full of subtext and one-line zingers. The only feat left for this film is to be shown as it was meant to be, a four hour epic of contrasting styles married together to create Tarantino's greatest creation, a shared safe space for its audience.
-Howard Ho