Kill Bill Vol 2 is a much different movie than the first volume. In fact, it actually changes the dynamic of the first one. Volume 1 had a simplistic plot - She had terrible thing done to her, she wants revenge. A cold hearted "I want to kill you for what you did to me" type of revenge. Volume adds so much depth to that. What we end up with a shakespearian love tragedy. Except instead of being told by Shakespear, it is told by Tarantino. Instead of being a play, it is a Kung Fu movie. Nothing takes place in the real world. It is a Kung Fu world, the same world that so many previous Kung Fu and Samaurai movies took place in. Considering this, any complaints about realism are totally unjustified. It would be like saying that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is unrealistic.

Anyway, back to the love tragedy. Throughout all of volume 2, we find out that Bill and Uma had a deep romantic love. But alas, they are assassins, and a romance between Assassins can never be anything more than a romance. Uma knows this, and when she suddenly finds out that she is pregnant, she runs, in hopes that she can start a new life to raise her daughter in. By doing this, she is betraying Bill in the worst way. He assumes that she was killed by another assassin, and after much mourning, he sets out to avenge his lover's death. In an attempt to track down her killer, he instead finds her - hiding under a new name, knocked up, and getting married to some schmuck. We already know that Bill is an irrational killer, and being put in this situation he turns to rage. We now realize that this is the cause of the Wedding Chapel Massacre. His actions are now justified, and this adds extra depth to the relationship between him and Uma. It sets up a very emotional final confrontation, where Bill, in his way, apologizes to Uma for his "overreaction" and he explains, in a very tarantino fashion, that doing what he did hurt him hurt him horribly afterward.
It becomes obvious in their reactions to one another that they are still deeply in love. The predicament is that they have both betrayed each other, and neither one can trust the other. They are professional killers, after all. One of them has to die, and they both know this in the end. As Uma delivers her 5 point palm exploding heart technique, we see an extreme sadness cross her face. Raw emotion sets in as they both realize that Bill is about to die. In the final scene, we see Uma weeping on the bathroom floor, mourning her lover's death. We see the tears of sadness swiftly change to tears of joy as she thinks of her daughter who is in the next room. All I can say is "Wow". This is why I go see movies.

A lot of people think that Volume 2 had a lot of pointless scenes. I disagree. Many of the scenes were there for very important character development, some of which didn't become apparent to me until the end. The scenes with Budd, while not completely necessary to the movie, said a lot of Bill's relationship with his brother. Bill always knew his brother could be something special, but Budd refused to take on the challenge. Instead, he was happy living in his trailer, cleaning toilets at the nudie bar, and getting chewed out by his boss for being late. I can feel for Bill here. I think we all have some relative who refuses to live up to his or her potential. Budd even goes so far as to lie to everyone about pawning his Hattori Hanzo sword, because he wanted everyone to believe that he didn't care about that part of his life. We later find out that he didn't pawn the sword. More is added to this when we see that the sword is actually engraved "To the only man I ever loved - Bill." I found this to be very deep and meaningful, and I learned a lot more about Bill's character when I saw this.

I had a few complaints about the movie. The biggest being that I wanted more of these backstories. Hattori Hanzo was my favorite character of volume 1. He broke a sworn oath to help Beatrix kill Bill. Why did he do this? What is the story behind Bill and Hattori Hanzo's relationship? Volume 2 completely disregards this relationship. They excuse it by saying "Well Bill, you seem to have that affect on people" which really bothered me. They could have done a lot more with that. I also would have liked to know Bill's relationship with Julie Drefus's character. More Pai Mei would have been great too, but I was just soooo glad that we got as much of him as we did. He was great. Did anyone else realize how important it was that he taught Beatrix the exploding heart technique? It meant that after so long of treating her like crap, he finally learned to trust her SO MUCH so that he taught her the technique that he had never taught anyone else in the world. That was very cool.

In conclusion, with both movies combined into a single movie, I would put this in my list of top 5 movies of all time. It is definitely QT's best work.

In KB V1, The Bride kills oodles of people. In V2, the only person she actually kills is Bill. Another interesting contrast.