Kill Bill: Volume 2

Five months after Quentin Tarantino made an emphatic return to form with Kill Bill, Volume 2 makes its presence felt, reconfirming the director's credentials as one of the great cinematic showmen of his age, and displaying there's plenty more in his arsenal than the bloody excess of the first instalment.

Not quite as visceral and violent as the first outing, Volume 2 sees Tarantino giving the Bride (Thurman) a little more back story and emotional depth. The film opens with a sassy Bride addressing the camera directly and re-emphasising how keen she is on seeing Bill (David Carradine) dead, really. From here, Volume 2 fleshes out the circumstances behind the massacre at the Bride's wedding rehearsal, clarifying the union between Bill and his former top girl. As she hunts down the remaining assassins responsible for putting her in a coma, the relationships between each character are developed, adding some much needed weight and gravitas to the material - not least when it comes to the snarling, deeply charismatic Bill himself.

It's clear that Tarantino's still having an absolute blast with Kill Bill: Volume 2 but he's careful not to repeat the sheer comic book intensity of the first film. More interested in the characters and their motivations while emphasising the humorous aspects of the material - see an excellent chapter where the Bride is tutored by Pei Mei (Gordon Liu), a hilarious unforgiving bearded monk - Tarantino calls upon many of his most trusted cinematic influences, mixes them with his own pop culture sensibilities, and fuses them into an exhilarating whole. With one eye on the emotional meat of the story, he manages to transcend the shallowness which occasionally blighted the first part of the double bill, without ever letting us forget that Kill Bill: 1 and 2 are all about putting the fun back into the flicks. And you just can't argue with that sort of attitude.