Kill Bill: Volume 2

Released in the United States on 16 April 2004 and in France on Monday 17 May, the day after its out-of-competition screening at Cannes, Kill Bill: Volume 2 completes the Bride's revenge. The tone shifts: less sword, more dialogue, more western and old-school kung fu. Quentin Tarantino moves his tribute from the Shaw Brothers to the spaghetti western, with Ennio Morricone tracks on the soundtrack.

Pai Mei and the school of pain

The martial heart of the film is the flashback with Pai Mei, played by Gordon Liu. The long-bearded master is a stock figure of Shaw Brothers kung fu films, where Liu built his career from The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978). The Bride learns short-range striking, the punch that goes through a board from a few inches away, and the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, which Pai Mei taught to no one but her. That training pays off when Budd buries her alive: she punches her way out of the coffin.

The trailer fight

The duel between the Bride (Uma Thurman) and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) in Budd's trailer is the film's big fight: a brutal close-quarters brawl in a cramped space, far from the wire work of Volume 1, which ends with an eye torn out. It won the MTV Movie Award for best fight. Yuen Woo-ping again supervised the action. David Carradine, the former star of the TV series Kung Fu, finally appears as Bill, whom the first film never showed face on, and Michael Madsen plays Budd.

What a practitioner will recognise

The Pai Mei sequence uses every code of training scenes in 1970s kung fu films: repetition, humiliation, slow progress, respect earned. Thurman's work on the short punch recalls Bruce Lee's one-inch punch. The trailer fight looks like what self-defence students drill: no room, everyday objects used as weapons, and a Hattori Hanzo sword that changes everything once it leaves the scabbard.

Reception

Critics preferred this second half: 84% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and 83 out of 100 on Metacritic. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and wrote that the two films together are greater than their parts. Cahiers du cinéma ranked it ninth on its 2004 list. Uma Thurman and David Carradine were nominated for Golden Globes. The film grossed $152 million worldwide and drew 1.32 million admissions in France according to AlloCiné. Since December 2025, both volumes have been back in cinemas as Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, in the United States and then Spain: the trailer above is the one for that version, published by Lionsgate.