Kill Bill Volume 2 vs The Professional

A rule I just made: Only one director is allowed to put the opening credits of a movie at the end, after the end credits. That director is Quentin Tarantino. I loved Kill Bill Volume 1, but part of me kept thinking that if a movie is all about revenge, and hunting people down one at a time just to kill them, and then the movie is cut in half, then won’t the second half pretty much just be the first half with different victims? Granted, if Kill Bill Volume 2 was the same movie as Kill Bill Volume 1, it would still rock. But, Kill Bill Volume 2 completes the second half of the original tale, plus it stands alone as a movie unto itself. And guess what? It rocks anyway.

We pick up where we left off. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is driving onward in her mission, checking victims off her to-kill list. The opening scene is black-and-white, with the Bride driving a convertible and recapping her previous adventures directly to the audience. “I got bloody revenge.” The fake scenery zips past behind her, like Janet Leigh in Psycho. The Bride’s not running from trouble, though, she’s going to start some.

Seriously, I think this is a beautiful movie. Kill Bill Volume 2 holds more surprises than its first half, namely in the characterizations. We get a flashback to the Bride’s wedding day massacre (which actually took place at her wedding rehearsal). It’s a stunning sequence, also in black and white, with shots of the wedding party framed by smoke curling up from the piano player in the foreground (he’s cool, but I’m not telling.) We learn more about why the Bride is leaving, and what that might mean to Bill. The massacre, amazingly, takes place almost completely off-camera, but it remains one of the more brutal acts in the series.

We also meet Budd, Bill’s brother, and a former member of the Viper Squad. Budd is a bouncer now, living in a tiny camper in the desert. He understands the Bride’s anger, and thinks she deserves her revenge. By the time she shows up, Budd has been fired from his job, so he’s in no mood. I won’t reveal what Budd does to the Bride, but I was damn near convinced that she might not finish her list. Tarantino has said this scene is the best of its kind, and I think he’s right. It’s a tense, awful, exhilarating sequence, and the darker the theater, the better.

Eventually, of course, the Bride triumphs, but it’s not easy, especially since it’s followed by a long walk back across the desert, with the hottest, meanest Viper of them all waiting for her. I’m talking, of course, about Elle Driver, played by the eye-patched Daryl Hannah. Elle and the Bride throw down inside the tiny camper, and it’s a sight to behold. The camper leaves little room for swords, so Elle and the Bride use everything they can get their hands on as weapons, including toilets and TV antennas. Considering the other fights in these movies, this one is such a wonder, because it’s just as elaborate, in its own way, as the battle with the Crazy 88 in Volume 1, but on a much smaller scale.

The Bride, still played beautifully by Uma Thurman, is a more fully-realized character in Volume 2. She even has an uncensored name now, although it’s not my place to tell it. We learn that she’s been working for Bill for years, and in her youth—awkward and crushing on Bill—she was sent to train under Pai Mei, who may or may not be immortal and/or a character from a movie I’ve never seen. Pai Mei puts the Bride through her paces. She claims to be a good fighter and an expert with a Samurai sword, both proven wrong quickly. The scenes with Pai Mei are filmed like 1970s Kung Fu movies, with over-the-top sound effects and rapid extreme close-ups. There’s a stylish sequence of the Bride and Pai Mei training, bathed in red, that is cool on its own, but even more so when compared with a similar blue scene in Volume 1.

The ending of Kill Bill Volume 2 is probably going to be in question for years to come. I think it’s pretty cool. It’s surprisingly tender and not nearly as much of a showdown as you might expect. Thurman and David Carradine (as Bill) are remarkable in the last moments. I think Tarantino is getting in a joke near the end, when the Bride completes some very cool fight choreography without ever rising from her chair. I guess he figures she earned a rest. After almost four hours of stylish mayhem, music and fun, not to mention the most unadulterated love of movies I’ve ever seen on screen, Tarantino has earned a break too, or at least the right to put the credits wherever he damn well pleases.

And I didn’t even mention that there’s an actual black mamba snake in the movie. I mean, come on, her code name is Black Mamba, and they have a real black mamba! How cool is that?

When I wrote about Kill Bill Volume 1, I went out of my way to illustrate how cool it was by comparing it to something terrible. Now I just wanna share the love. Go home and dig up another stylized, hyper-violent tale of revenge. Watch Leon: The Professional. What’s that, you say? Who’s this Leon? Isn’t it just called The Professional? Well, in this country, where we love to see shit blow up, but don’t like to admit it, The Professional was sanitized somewhat for our protection. The original, Leon, is on DVD now, and it’s the recommended version of what I think is Luc Besson’s best movie. So, how different is Leon from The Professional? Honestly, without watching them side by side, I can’t find that much more violence. It was always bullet-ridden and bloody. Now though, much like Kill Bill Volume 2, Leon provides its main characters with more heart. Especially for Jean Reno, who plays Leon.

For the uninitiated (and seriously, where have you been?), Leon tells the story of Matilda (a very young Natalie Portman), who lives with her nasty drug-dealing family in a small apartment. She’s out getting groceries when they’re massacred by corrupt DEA agents, led by Gary Oldman. Matilda approaches the apartment just in time to almost get caught, and instead begs quietly at the door of Leon, who eventually lets her inside. Leon is a cleaner (I’m not telling you what a cleaner is if you don’t already know), and Matilda wants desperately to learn his craft. He agrees to teach her, and they embark on an odd, father/daughter, brother/sister, romantic/creepy/sweet relationship that keeps the brutal violence in the background. Sure, some of Leon is way over-the-top. Did I mention that Gary Oldman plays the villain? But it’s crazy amounts of fun, with almost operatic violence at times, mixed with the little character moments shared by Leon and Matilda. Every scene is a marvel of action film-making. Leon, like Kill Bill, is a movie filmed for the wide screen. Jean Reno is perfectly cast as Leon, mostly silent and deadly, but sad and lonely as well. As Matilda, Natalie Portman gives a refreshingly non-cute performance, making her child-acting debut one of the least painful ever. There has been rumor that Luc Besson is interested in following Matilda’s adventures in an update of Leon. If Portman is interested, and Besson is able to tap into the virtuoso camera tricks and razor-sharp edits of Leon, then count me in. I can think of at least one movie he might watch to put himself back in the mood.

Kill Bill Volume 2: A
Leon: the Professional: A-