Kill Bill: Vol. 2 Review

She rampaged, she slashed and she roared in Volume 1 and now the undisputed scariest girl in cinema, The Bride, is back to finish the job in Quentin Tarantino's concluding part of his gory magnum opus "Kill Bill." So, has QT hit the giddy and gory heights of cinematic heaven again? Well, the answer to that has to be almost, but not quite. Kicking off where the first episode left off, we find the hardest blonde in the West back on the vengeance trail after being gunned down by her ex-colleagues, not to mention her ex-lover Bill, on her wedding day. And after the first episode's spectacular blood-letting, there's only two more treacherous foes - Darryl Hannah's one-eyed maniac Elle and Michael Madsen's bloated barfly Budd - standing between her and the kill of the eponymous Bill.

Now, if you happened to hate the first episode, this second slice of kung-fu mayhem isn't going to win your over. And the unfortunate thing is if you absolutely loved Volume 1, you might well be disappointed too. The exhilarating breakneck action of the first film has, as was anticipated, been largely replaced by page upon page of Tarantino dialogue. The problem is, the chat's actually pretty sub-standard stuff and as a result the relationships - particularly the central love affair between the Bride and Bill - turn out to be spectacularly unconvincing. That said, there's still enough bravura set-pieces to enjoy amongst all the yacking: Gordon Liu is hilarious as the Bride's kung fu master, Darryl Hannah is surprisingly good fun as the gleefully sinister Elle and the fights, when they come, are gasp-inducingly good. When viewed together with the first super-charged episode, "Kill Bill: Volume 2" might just about work. On its own, however, it's a kung-fu kick too far.