The Kill Bill series have never been in the top Tarantino films for me, although good I just didn’t love them. In this cut that features both films melded together, I still felt the same however the four hour runtime is a marathon that I wouldn’t want to sit through again in one go. I’m not versed enough to notice the subtle changes vs the original cuts.
Review by Paladin5150BlockedParent2024-04-10T15:54:18Z
Over a decade since it was released, and Kill Bill still holds up as one of the best "I've been done wrong, and I shall have my revenge" sagas ever committed to celluloid. With the release of "KB: The Whole Bloody Affair", the viewer is able to enjoy the entire saga in one fell swoop if so desired. As a bonus, this 215 minute version adds some scenes either missing or only alluded to in the original edits.
First up, the opening Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." is gone and is replaced with a dedication to the late director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale). Then in the O-Ren anime sequence, which was already fairly gory, the young O-Ren's murder of yakuza boss Matsumoto is even bloodier, with a close-up of his stomach and intestines spilling out after she guts him like a hunter does an opening day deer. In the House Of Blue Leaves sword fight against the Crazy 88, which changed to black and white in the original after Beatrix rips out a henchman's eye, here, the entire battle is in shown in color, which amplifies the severity of the carnage with gallons of Karo and red dye number 40 as several dozen limbs are severed and the entire sound stage ends up looking like the vampire club scene in Blade. There are also several different angles and gory shots added into the sequence including a brief, earlier encounter with the young boy Beatrix ends up spanking with her sword. With that addition, her reaction at their second encounter pays off better.
There is also an additional scene with Beatrix and Bill's lawyer Sofie Fatale, which clarifies why she was so broken (if losing one arm wasn't bad enough) when Bill is consoling her in the hospital. And finally, as Beatrix enters Bill's house and finds out what happened to her daughter, its a much better reveal since that reveal hadn't been hinted at as in the original versions.
While recent rumors of a Kill Bill: Volume 3 have yet to be confirmed, there IS a potential path forward as set up in Volume 1. Seeing as Beatrix is hardly an innocent victim. She's an assassin who kills other assassins, including another killer turned mother, as she consolingly tells Vernita Green's little girl, "When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting." She says this knowing there yet may also come a time when she, too, may be taken to account for going beyond "justice", and "balancing the books" in favor of pure and simple revenge.
Uma has said she would work with Quentin Tarantino again if he wrote a great part. Maybe that part could be Kill Bill, Vol. 3. Tarantino has said he will retire after his tenth film and he has already made his ninth, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", which interestingly, did cast Thurman's daughter in an unspecified role. So what the future holds has yet to be written, but I for one, would look forward to revisiting the deadly viper assassin's world one more time.