“I want you to tell him all the information you just told me. I want him to know what I know. I want him to know I want him to know. And I want them all to know they’ll all soon be as dead as O-Ren.”
The pairing and re-release of both volumes of Quentin Tarantino’s kung-fu, gangster splat-fest, Kill Bill Volumes 1& 2: The Whole Bloody Affair, is an obnoxious cash-grab and bid for relevancy for the attention-starved director. A slightly lengthened section of the O-Ren origin anime segment clears up a minor ambiguity present in the first film but no other major reconstructions are present. The two films are at odds when it comes to pacing, spectacle and action sequences. There is no effort made to integrate the two movies into a single cohesive picture despite the temporal continuity of the two plots. This interminable, spliced, hybrid of a picture fitfully sputters with bad pacing where the two films connect and this reviewer did not anticipate how poorly the movies would align. The self-indulgence culminates after the (lengthy) staggered credits with a short film depicting these bloodthirsty, heartless, bastard assassins sanitized as licensed characters in a kid’s game, Fortnite.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is a Lionsgate 2025 re-release of Miramax films from 2003 and 2004, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Star Uma Thurman leads a large ensemble cast featuring Sonny Chiba, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Chiaki Kuriyama, Gordon Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Juie Dreyfus, Daryl Hannah, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Parks.
“I can tell you with no ego, this is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut.”
The weary and pregnant Beatrix Kiddo (Thurman) has fled the life of an assassin but cannot escape her blood-soaked past. Her wedding rehearsal is interrupted by her former compatriots, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, composed of Budd (Madsen), the Sidewinder, O-Ren Ishii (Liu), the Cottonmouth, Elle (Hannah), the California Mountain Snake and Vernita (Fox), the Copperhead. They mow the participants down with relentless gunfire on the order of Snake Charmer Bill (Carradine), their leader. Once the wedding party has been repeatedly perforated, Bill approaches the supine, blood-spattered Bride and puts a bullet into Kiddo’s skull.
Beatrix lies in a coma for four years as her body heals. When she abruptly wakes, she discovers she’s no longer pregnant. Kiddo’s rage subsumes her and revenge is all she can think of. She wants the Deadly Vipers and her ex, their boss, Bill dead. To get what she wants, she’ll need a weapon, but not just any weapon. She’ll have to convince the legendary sword-maker, Hattori Hanso (Chiba), Bill’s former mentor, to help her. Hanso swore an oath to God to never again make something that kills people and has retired in shame.
Can Betrix coax Hanso to break that sacred promise? Will he create a blade she can use to beat Bill? Will Kiddo be able to locate the Vipers and murder them? Will killing her assailants finally bring her peace or will one of them take her out and give her the big sleep? If you have four and a quarter hours to kill, see Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair to find out.
“That woman deserves her revenge and we deserve to die.”
Though Tarantino says he initially planned to put both films together in 2003, the way they have been released and presented, they are not compatible as a single unit. The second film lacks the grace, gas and gloss of the first. Volume 1 is all frenetic fights, high glamor, cool outfits and sky-high blood-spurts after sword-slashing action. Volume 2 feels like wandering the desert backlot behind the SETS of the first movie, waiting for Godot. George Lucas was constantly tinkering with his Star Wars films until he sold the license. A recut and re-layering of the combined film would’ve helped with the pacing issues and might have avoided bottoming out after the hard-to-top, climactic battle between Beatrix the Bride and the Crazy 88’s at the House of Blue Leaves.
The all-out brawl against the Crazy 88’s is incredible. Yuen Woo-ping’s fight choreography is immaculate. The duel behind the House of Blue Leaves is one of the best action sequences Tarantino has put to film. It’s certainly the most beautiful. Color accents both characters. The warm amber lights of the windows behind her amplify the yellow of Beatrix’s motorcycle leathers while on the snow-shrouded grounds of the Japanese garden, the shimmering, frigid flakes match O-Ren’s ice-white kimono and demeanor. Then, after swords sing, crimson blood splashes out to stain the pristine, ivory snowscape and all the while, the indifferent snow dances downward through the dark blue sky.
The world Kiddo inhabits is Tarantino’s vision of the Star Trek original series episode A Piece of the Action, where the Enterprise visits a planet controlled by mobsters. The cops in Beatrix’s world are made out to be the Washington Generals, reactive, ineffective and stumbling along with their gym shorts pulled down to their knees. The Texas Rangers responding to the El Paso attack are never seen again. There is no presence of law enforcement visible in Tokyo or elsewhere in the film beyond the Rangers and the coroner’s office working the crime scene at the rehearsal. Characters feel free to walk around slinging swords to the point that the Air-O first class cabin seats have sconces for katana scabbards and in Tokyo, people drive with their blades ready to be drawn.
Any mention of the name Beatrix is bleeped out until the last quarter of the second film. That artistic choice by Tarantino never sat right with this reviewer two decades ago. It still doesn’t make any sense to bleep out her name. It’s silly doing it in a 21-year- old, re-released movie. There are several extreme closeups of rounds that aren’t spinning as they are blasting out of rifled barrels, which is weird. When Beatrix wakes up, her legs are atrophied after her four-year coma, but her arms seem ok. Fine enough to drag her across the floor, smash the shit out of Buck’s skull and pull herself into the Pussymobile. There are so many unrealistic moments in this over-the-top kung-fu revenge flick that her atrophy shouldn’t be an issue, but It’s just a little discordant and stuck out to me (like the extreme closeups of Thurman’s toes in that sequence. This reviewer lost track of how many times Tarantino focused his lenses on Beatrix’s bare feet throughout the picture(s) but they got a LOT of attention).
Visually, Volume 2 looks… rushed. Sets look small, the camera angles narrow and panning is less expansive. One of the reasons Volume 2 drags along are the depicted transit sequences, whereas the brisk editing, map-based animation and music blinks away miles in Volume 1.
The story reads like a kid’s narration while he bangs his toys together. Dialogue is stilted and formal in the style of classic kung fu or samurai flicks until Tarantino feels the need to fling ethnic slurs like a proud adolescent saying naughty things. For example, “I have no wish to murder you before the eyes of your daughter” and “It was not my intention to do this in front of you… When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting.” becomes “I don’t dodge guilt and I don’t Jew out of paying my comeuppance.”
Some gold dust is in the pan, Parks’ line about the wedding massacre, “It would appear someone objected to this union and wasn’t able to hold their peace” is clever and nicely incongruous with the magnitude of the rehearsal turned charnel abattoir. There are a few other snicker-worthy lines of dialogue but most banter attempts are clunkers and the film is full of characters making speeches to captive audiences (and the audience).
This reviewer found it incredibly frustrating that they didn’t put the Fortnite “lost chapter” BEFORE the (very long) twinned credits instead of after and theplastic, uncanny-valley CG doesn’t come close to matching the earlier anime-inspired parts of Kill Bill in style nor the live-action film in terms of substance. Fortnite doesn’t fit with the gore, guts and gunfire in the movie because in The Whole Bloody Affair, the characters bleed, the characters die, the characters DON’T respawn.
If you have the original films on Blu-ray or DVD, skip this cinematic venture. Combining both films magnifies the flaws in each, especially the poor pacing. It’s better to watch Kill Bill at home, at your leisure, in pieces.
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is in select theatres 12/5/2025.
Newsdesk