Smoke, mirrors and swordplay mask the void

So, yeah, I saw “Kill Bill: Vol. 2,” and the best thing that I can say about it is that it’s better than “Vol. 1.”

Look, Tarantino has many qualities. And they are, I might add, far easier to admire if you can just avoid hearing him talk about himself (the man has an ego the size of Taiwan ). Many of those qualities show up in my favorite parts of both films: the anime sequence, the hospital escape, the sword-making sequence of “Vol. 1”; the coffin scene, the performance of Michael Parks , any and all scenes with David Carradine in “Vol. 2.”

Yet I can’t get over the idea that these two separate films should never have been split up. The first is all action, the second mostly characterization, and this is the opposite of most films (not to mention most forms of storytelling in general). This might have worked fine had our wait been a 10-minute intermission instead of a five-month interruption. As it is, Tarantino has to spend the first 20 minutes of “Vol. 2” catching us up. And even if that sequence is brilliant (all black and white, with Sergio Leone -like shots and closeups with stark vistas in the background, booted feet walking slowly toward each other), think of how it would have worked at the film’s very beginning.

Then the resulting killing frenzy of The Bride, aka Beatix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) would have had a lot more impact, made a lot more sense. Tarantino has experimented in the past with scene sequencing, unsticking his characters in time more than Billy Pilgrim ever thought to be. But it simply wasn’t necessary here. The Master decreed that it should be, though, so that’s what we get.

And let’s not even get into all the extra money that Miramax is pocketing by getting us to pay twice for a single film.