---
title: "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"
year: 2004
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-2"
fi1m_id: "kill-bill-vol-2"
imdb_id: "tt0378194"
tmdb_id: 393
wikidata_id: "Q928019"
fi1m_score: 77
critics_score: 71
critics_reviews: 7
published: "2026-09-09"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:52.738570+00:00"
region: "VN"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino · 2h 16m · Action, Crime, Thriller

## Identity

Kill Bill: Vol. 2

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-2
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** kill-bill-vol-2
- **IMDb ID:** tt0378194
- **TMDB ID:** 393
- **Wikidata ID:** Q928019
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378194/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/393, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q928019

**Fi1m score: 77** · Critics 71 from 7 reviews

*In a sentence:* Fewer swords, more chairs; David Carradine wins the film without getting up

> The second half of Tarantino’s revenge story slows down, talks more and fights less, and is the better for it. David Carradine’s Bill is worth the wait; the film around him is twenty minutes longer than it needs to be.

## Synopsis

The second half of Quentin Tarantino’s revenge story picks up with two names left on the Bride’s list. Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman), shot at her own wedding rehearsal and left for dead, has already worked through the first half of the assassination squad that did it. Now she goes after Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill’s brother, who lives in a trailer in the Texas scrub and works the door at a strip club, and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), the one-eyed killer who wants the Bride for herself. Behind both of them is Bill (David Carradine), the man who ran the squad and whom the Bride has not seen since the chapel. Along the way she remembers her training under the master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu).

## Review

[*Kill Bill: Vol. 1*](https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-1) (2003) was a sword fight with a story attached. *Vol. 2* is the story, with a sword fight attached, and it is the better half. The Bride (Uma Thurman) has two names left before she reaches Bill, and Tarantino spends 136 minutes getting her there by way of Texas, Mexico and a mountain in China. Most of it is people sitting down and talking. Some of it is too long. Nearly all of it is worth the evening.

It opens in black and white at a wedding rehearsal in a wooden chapel, and Robert Richardson holds a single wide shot from the doorway while the wedding party fusses inside and something bad walks up behind them. We hear Bill before we see him, a flute played on a bench outside, and Carradine’s voice arrives ahead of his face, soft and reasonable and quite unbothered. It is the best entrance in either film. Michael Parks turns up afterwards as the sheriff, chewing over the scene in the tone of a man who has seen worse and would rather not say where.

Then Texas. Michael Madsen’s Budd lives in a trailer full of dead beer cans and a hat he cannot afford, and takes a dressing-down from the strip club owner who has cut his shifts without arguing back. David Wasco, Cao Juiping and Yohei Taneda dress the place so that everything in it looks like it was found rather than bought. What Budd does when the Bride arrives we will not describe. Richardson shoots the ten minutes that follow almost entirely in darkness, by the light of a torch and a match, and the sound design does the rest: breath, wood, the scrape of a fingernail. We stopped breathing for a while. It is the most frightening thing Tarantino has put on screen, and there is not a drop of blood in it.

From that box the film cuts to a mountain and to Gordon Liu as Pai Mei, and the picture changes stock. The colours go hot and cheap, the zoom lens comes out, the master strokes his white beard and delivers his insults in a dubbed-sounding bark. Thurman carries water up steps and punches a plank of wood until her knuckles split. We laughed a great deal, and the joke is affectionate rather than superior; Liu plays the old fraud as if he means every word. It is the film’s happiest half hour and it earns the fight that comes after.

That fight is Daryl Hannah’s, in the trailer, and it is the one stretch that belongs to the first volume. Sally Menke cuts it tight and dirty, bodies against walls, a toilet, a television, no room to swing anything. Hannah plays Elle as pure spite with an eyepatch and gets the film’s nastiest line, which she delivers while reading from a notebook. How it ends we will leave alone.

The last section is a conversation, and Carradine carries it. He has the courtesy of a man who has never had to raise his voice, and he makes a speech about comic books sound like a threat and a threat sound like a bedtime story. Thurman, who spent the first film mostly in motion, has to sit opposite him and answer, and she is good at it; her face does more here than her sword did. Robert Rodriguez and RZA supply the music, a spare guitar and trumpet, and for once Tarantino lets scenes go quiet.

It is baggy. The Mexico chapter, with Parks again under a wig as a brothel-keeper called Esteban Vihaio, is a pleasant detour that adds five minutes and nothing else. Chapter titles stop the film dead each time. The stretch after the Elle fight and before the final house sags, and we felt the length in our legs. [*Jackie Brown*](https://film.one/film/jackie-brown) (1997) showed Tarantino could sit still for two hours; this shows he cannot quite decide how still.

See it after *Vol. 1*, the same night if you can bear four and a half hours of it, because the two films argue with each other and the argument is the point. It carries an 18 and it earns it in the dark rather than in the red.

*Fi1m score 77, published 9 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics take Vol. 2 as the slower, talkier half of the story and like it for that. The praise clusters on David Carradine’s Bill and Uma Thurman’s Bride, on the long dialogue scenes, and on a finale several reviews find more moving than the first film gave any reason to expect. The shift towards a Sergio Leone western pace is noted approvingly more than once, and a few reviews argue the two volumes only make full sense taken together.

The reservations are mostly about length: even admirers find padded scenes and a middle stretch that drifts. The spread is wide rather than narrow. The New Yorker calls it a shapeless mess and objects to Tarantino treating his own trash aesthetic solemnly; The Times finds the retro shtick stale and the revenge without savour; Eye for Film sees a fanboy unwilling to grow up. Almost nobody sits in the middle: the reviews are either won over or not.

## Straight answers

**Is Kill Bill: Vol. 2 worth watching?**

*Kill Bill: Vol. 2* is worth watching for anyone who has seen the first film and wants the story that was missing from it, and we scored it 77. It talks more and fights less, and David Carradine's Bill is worth the wait, but the film runs about twenty minutes longer than it needs to and sags before the final house.

**How long is Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and what is it rated?**

*Kill Bill: Vol. 2* runs 2h 16m. It is an action and crime film.

**Where can I watch Kill Bill: Vol. 2 in Vietnam?**

*Kill Bill: Vol. 2* is streaming on Netflix in Vietnam, and it is also available to rent from Apple TV from ₫39,000. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and is it suitable for children?**

*Kill Bill: Vol. 2* carries an 18 certificate and is not suitable for children. It is less bloody than the first film but more frightening: a ten-minute stretch shot almost entirely in darkness, by torch and match, had us holding our breath, and the trailer fight with Daryl Hannah is tight and nasty. Squeamish adults will cope better here than with *Vol. 1*; the young should not watch either.

**How does Kill Bill: Vol. 2 compare to Kill Bill: Vol. 1?**

*Kill Bill: Vol. 2* is the better of the two films, because it has the story and the first has the sword fights. *Vol. 1* is the more purely made and the less written, half a film that knows it; *Vol. 2* slows down, sits people in chairs and lets David Carradine talk. Those who came for blades will prefer the first; those who want to know why anyone is fighting will prefer this one.

**What should I watch after Kill Bill: Vol. 2?**

After *Kill Bill: Vol. 2*, try [*Kill Bill: Vol. 1*](https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-1) (2003, Fi1m 72): The first half, all blades and blood; this one makes more sense with it. Then [*The 36th Chamber of Shaolin*](https://film.one/film/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin) (1978, Fi1m 83): Gordon Liu, young, carrying the water himself; the training film Pai Mei is parodying; and [*Once Upon a Time in the West*](https://film.one/film/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west) (1968, Fi1m 91): Leone at his slowest and widest; where the flute and the long waits come from.

### Reviews we read (13)

- **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (4/4): Ebert calls the film an exuberant celebration of moviemaking that he liked even more than the first volume, viewing it as a completion rather than a sequel that gives the story greater resonance. He singles out the developed characters and the hypnotic final dialogue meeting between the Bride and Bill for particular praise. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/kill-bill-volume-2-2004)
- **The New York Times**, Elvis Mitchell (85/100, inferred): Mitchell hails the film as a deliciously perverse and operatic comic-book movie that is rich and substantial. He singles out Uma Thurman's performance and the long, languorous dialogues for praise while noting its shift from the first volume's blood lust to more emotional depth. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/16/movies/film-review-vengeance-still-mine-saieth-the-lethal-bride.html)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Manohla Dargis (80/100, inferred): Dargis praises the film as an adrenaline shot of pure pop pleasure and a great American movie that proves Tarantino has more to offer than pyrotechnics. She singles out the personal vision, actor wrangling, and shift to a slower Sergio Leone western beat for praise. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-apr-16-et-dargis16-story.html)
- **The AV Club**, Nathan Rabin (80/100, inferred): The film succeeds by melding the rambling, monologue-heavy style of earlier Tarantino with bursts of stylized action, delivering an emotionally satisfying conclusion centered on the complex relationship between The Bride and Bill. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/kill-bill-volume-2-1798199500)
- **Slant Magazine**, Keith Uhlich (75/100, inferred): Vol. 2 shifts into more solemn, mature territory with fewer fights and greater moral and thematic depth, highlighting yin-yang contrasts, strong performances from Thurman and Carradine, and a profoundly moving finale that rewards hindsight. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/kill-bill-vol-2/)
- **The New Yorker**, David Denby (35/100, inferred): Denby finds the film a shapeless mess that is at least less monotonous than the first volume but still fails to deliver coherent action or substance. He singles out the self-referential allusions and Tarantino's solemnizing of his own trash aesthetic for criticism. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/04/19/chopping-block)
- **Empire**, Colin Kennedy: The critic notes that the split into volumes damages the intended structure and surprise of Vol. 2 compared to the original screenplay, but praises how the film supplies character interiors and intensity as the emotional yin to Vol. 1's kinetic yang. The intimate third-act ending provides perfect balance and emotional payoff despite not competing on action or iconography. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/kill-bill-vol-2-review/)
- **Screen Daily**: The review praises the verbose drama and brilliant fight sequences that make Vol. 2 seductive, completing the Bride's revenge story in a talky, character-driven manner. It positions the full Kill Bill as a grand, mythology-rich achievement akin to major epics. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/kill-bill-vol-2-review/4018070.article)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw: The critic praises the film's pedal-to-the-metal exhilaration, style, and energy as it concludes the revenge saga with flair. David Carradine's performance as Bill is singled out as a particular triumph that justifies splitting the story into two films. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,4267,1200653,00.html)
- **The Telegraph**, Sukhdev Sandhu: The critic calls it enjoyable and visually dazzling with strong performances and references, worth seeing despite not being Tarantino's best. It singles out the sound design, cinematography, and Carradine's menacing performance for praise while noting it is too long with padded scenes. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3615767/Bloody-marvellous-movie-making.html)
- **The Times**, Cosmo Landesman (1 star): The review deems the film unnecessary and old-fashioned, with retro shtick that no longer feels fresh, and argues the revenge story fails because evil triumphs over evil without moral contrast or enjoyment. It singles out the bloated length and lack of savour in the revenge for complaint. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/film-something-borrowed-hc6kmmmnrzk)
- **Time Out**, NB: The review notes that Vol. 2 broadens and deepens the tale with more genre shading, character, and dialogue alongside action, though questions its coherence and finds the pathos a stretch. It admires the chutzpah of Tarantino's approach. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/kill-bill-vol-2)
- **Eye for Film**, Keith Hennessey Brown (30/100, inferred): The critic finds the film to be the work of a consummate fanboy unwilling to mature as a filmmaker, highlighting its excessive intertextual references and lack of originality. They single out the postmodern approach as laziness rather than innovation. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/kill-bill-volume-2-film-review-by-keith-hennessey-brown)

## Details

- **Director:** Quentin Tarantino
- **Director:** Quentin Tarantino
- **Screenplay:** Quentin Tarantino
- **Cinematography:** Robert Richardson
- **Editor:** Sally Menke
- **Music:** Robert Rodriguez, RZA
- **Production design:** Yohei Taneda, David Wasco, Cao Juiping
- **Costume design:** Kumiko Ogawa, Catherine Marie Thomas
- **Producer:** Lawrence Bender
- **Cast:** Uma Thurman as Beatrix Kiddo / The Bride / 'Black Mamba' / Mommy; David Carradine as Bill 'Snake Charmer'; Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver 'California Mountain Snake'; Michael Madsen as Budd 'Sidewinder'; Gordon Liu as Johnny Mo / Pai Mei; Michael Parks as Earl McGraw / Esteban Vihaio; Perla Haney-Jardine as B.B.; Vivica A. Fox as Vernita Green 'Copperhead'
- **Runtime:** 2h 16m
- **First release (the US):** 8 April 2004
- **Genres:** Action, Crime, Thriller
- **Budget:** $30 million
- **Box office:** $152 million

## Where to watch in Vietnam

- Netflix: streaming
- Apple TV: rent ₫39,000, hd
- Apple TV: buy ₫99,000, hd

*Checked 2026-09-10.*

Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, AZ, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, SK, TH, TR, UA, US, VN, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Kill Bill: Vol. 1* (2003), Fi1m 72: The first half, all blades and blood; this one makes more sense with it. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-1.md)
- *Lady Snowblood* (1973): The Japanese revenge film Tarantino was watching; colder, shorter, snow instead of scrub.
- *The 36th Chamber of Shaolin* (1978), Fi1m 83: Gordon Liu, young, carrying the water himself; the training film Pai Mei is parodying. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-36th-chamber-of-shaolin.md)
- *Once Upon a Time in the West* (1968), Fi1m 91: Leone at his slowest and widest; where the flute and the long waits come from. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west.md)
- *The Bride Wore Black* (1968): Truffaut’s widow works through five men on a list, politely and in colour.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/kill-bill-vol-2