Starring: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen (I), Daryl Hannah

5 out of 10 stars

I said last November that Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was like listening to Yo-Yo Ma play 41 different variations on the old Batman television theme. Kill Bill Vol. 2 is much the same, only this time, he's playing the theme from "Bonanza".

Now, I like the theme from "Bonanza" but I obviously don't like it in the same way that Quentin Tarantino likes it. There is such a thing as too much and Tarantino's grand excess for the love of film burbles over in Vol. 2. It reminds me of Janeane Garofalo's line from The Truth About Cats and Dogs to the person who admitted to giving their cat a tongue-bath: "We can love our pets, we just can't luuuuuuvvvvv our pets."

Cats and Dogs also starred the tall, Valkyrian Uma Thurman, who is the centerpiece of Vol. 2, as she was with Vol. 1. She's as impossibly gorgeous as ever, with facile delivery and charm when she wants to (I'm still in love with her character from Beautiful Girls). It's easy to see why Tarantino is so puppy-dog smitten.

Thurman continues her role as Black Mamba (aka, the Bride) who was shot in the head and left for dead by her former partners. Having dispensed with Cottonmouth (aka O-ren Ishi, played by Lucy Liu) and Copperhead (aka Vernita Green, played by Vivica Fox in the first installment of Kill, the Bride now has three more to cross out on her revenge list: California Mountain Snake (aka Elle Driver, played by Daryl Hannah), Sidewinder (aka Budd, played by Michael Madsen) and, of course, Bill (David Carradine). Thrown into the mix to complicate things is the Bride's daughter, who is living under Bill's roof.

And, there's no denying that if you're going to listen to 41 variations on the "Bonanza" theme that Tarantino is one of the few people working today who can make a good portion of it worthwhile. There is a scene, where the Bride is preparing to kill Budd, and in ninja garb outside of his trailer—and Budd hears something and looks out the window--that is so simple and so elegant and so composed and so damn good that I wish someone would make this son-a-bitch work harder. Make him direct Open Range (with his tweaks, of course) and you've got a film for the ages. Given his near unlimited resources Tarantino makes his 8-1/2, all self-indulgence and unfettered. Yes, he's the only one out there doing something like this. No, I don't particularly want any more of it.

Also blissfully absent from Vol. 2 are scenes like the "Pussy-wagon" hospital scene or the kiddie-porn anime sequence from the first installment. Tarantino had seemed to promise in Vol. 1 a more tragic tale, hewing closer to spaghetti westerns. He promised that with the mournful, regret-laden presence of Budd, who seemed to believe that the non-comatose members of the Viper Squad have got what's coming to them from their victim. Tarantino turns that on its head but not in the way you expect it, leading up to a scene straight out of the original Vanishing and finally There Was a Crooked Man (see? it's impossible not to be drawn to the director's film references, it's like getting a cookie for recognizing the inspiration of the scene).

What Tarantino does not do is deliver on the common sense of a spaghetti western. In "Massacre at Two Pines" we discover that the entire Viper Squad, including the number one yakuza boss in Japan (O-Ren), was brought in to machine-gun a wedding part, which takes all of eight to ten seconds. In a sequence near the end, a child who has just been sent to bed doesn't wake up when guns are fired in the house. You can't maintain a decent sense of drama in a western, homage or not, without it.

There is one final irony about all of this. Though I think Kill is largely a masturbatory exercise I know, if it's on cable some night, I'm going to watch it. That's a testament to Tarantino's awesome prowess, even if it is in the service of a video clerk's fantasies.