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While definitely more involving and character-driven than its predecessor, Volume 2's sudden lack of severed limbs and geysers of blood is almost confusing. Still, it manages to reek of Tarantino's love for movies while standing on its own as a work of art in itself.

As The Bride (Uma Thurman in probably her best performance to date) makes her way to the notorious Bill (a plain excellent David Carradine), the pleasure of wasting Bud (Michael Madsen, rightfully-as-hell playing himself as usual) and Elle (Darryl Hannah, reminding us why she was once a top-billed movie star) lies on the road ahead. Of course, Tarantino is too much of a phucking nutbag to put this into chronological order, but it actually flows quite smoothly this time.

Gordon Liu takes the taco for coolest new character though as Pai Mei, The Bride's Kung Fu instructor. His involvement in the flick's primary subplot makes every second of his presence as enjoyable as having a banana split while receiving oral pleasure (assuming one enjoys banana splits). In fact, there's nothing negative to be said about any of the cast. Quentin Tarantino can be called all the names the panzie "aw, now was that really necessary?" critics want to call him, but no one can deny that he knows how to pick his actors.

Sadly, this whole "Bill" thing would have been much more of a whammo experience if Tarantino had cut some fat off the beef and shoved the whole package into one box instead of two installments. By fat, I mean his more cliche Tarantino-ish yammering that has been imitated long enough by amateurs to make us sick of the original jargon -- for instance, Bill's incredibly long Superman speech at the end that makes one wish the Crazy 88s (the gang from Volume 1) would just pop out of the walls and start doing something more, um... interesting.

This habit of breaking movies into pieces like episodes of 90210 has become quite a bore. Sequels can be cool, but let them at least stand on their own. By the time little Frodo gave his slow motion "Gaaaandaaaalf!" to Gandalf in "Return of the King," it was not impossible to forget that he was under the impression that Gandalf was dead, seeing as how there had been two fucking 18-hour movies since we'd last seen them together. If you're gonna chop your movie up, at least have the decency to give the hero a character arc in each piece. This whole "To Be Continued, Gotta Go See the Next One Before I Can Fully Satisfy Your Needs" crap is getting old.

While much of the film's strength comes from its nod of "yes, you were cool" to the spaghetti western era, Tarantino does manage to show off that he has his own wit and originality to bring to the table. A scene near the climax that involves two gun-toting women and a home pregnancy test is the stuff that reminds an audience what clever writing is in this age of business-as-usual garbage that aimed-for-HELL execs crap onto our movie screens in an attempt to dumb us down into the level of their next nine-dollar turd.

If you liked the cartoonish violence of Volume 1 and are back for more, get ready for disappointment. There is really only one scene that displays such a level of "Holy Christ, did I actually just see that sick shit happen?" in Volume 2. Aside from that factor, there is no disappointment to be expected. While maybe a liiiiittle too much time was spent on humanizing everyone for the emotional story, "Kill Bill: Volume 2" delivers something in return for your money instead of taking it, smacking you on the head, calling you an idiot, and saying, "Shut up, bitch, you know you like it, now buy an 8-dollar soda from the concession stand and suck it. I'm from Hollywood."

(Three bongs)

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