Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair’ on VOD, an Effectively Epic Reworking of a Quentin Tarantino Classic

By John Serba

If Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) exists solely to inspire a rewatch of a Quentin Tarantino classic, it’s a good reason. But it’s more than that, of course – the story of its making, original release and rerelease is nearly as epic as the movie itself. Tarantino originally conceptualized it as one four-hour film, but producer (and then-not-yet-outed serial sex offender) Harvey Weinstein persuaded him to release it in two parts, in 2003 and 2004. Subsequently, Tarantino pieced the two films together and screened The Whole Bloody Affair at Cannes in 2006 and in 2011 at his New Beverly Cinema, then let a discussed worldwide theatrical release nearly die on the vine for 14 years before it actually happened. Tarantino tinkered in the editing room to streamline the narrative (e.g., he cut out the Volume 1 cliffhanger and the recap at the beginning of Volume 2), and adds a new-for-this-version extension of the original anime sequence, originally scaled back for budgetary reasons. The result is, of course, excellent, and nostalgic for those of us Who Were There, but is it definitive?    

KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: Kill Bill opens in classic Tarantino form: A title card that reads CHAPTER ONE: 2. Dude just can’t start at the beginning, can he? Busted-up narratives are just his thing. That, and we need a banger to hook us. The Bride (Uma Thurman), whose real name is bleeped out until after the intermission (and is also a great joke), pulls up to a suburban house in her Pussy Wagon. Well, it’s not her Pussy Wagon, because she steals it later in the movie-slash-earlier in the narrative. (See what I mean?) Inside that house is Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), and Vernita Green must die. It’s a revenge thing. She and The Bride used to be allies, back when they were members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by The Bride’s lover, Bill (David Carradine). But The Bride wasn’t going to marry Bill. She was going to marry the owner of a record store. A bone of contention, you might say. And so, during the rehearsal, Bill and his killers showed up and massacred everyone. The wedding party, the pastor, the pastor’s wife. Everyone. Bill’s coup de grace was to put a bullet in The Bride’s skull. The Bride, who was many months pregnant.

But she survived. From here, I may divulge a spoiler or two, but the statute of limitations on Kill Bill expired long ago, and you’d be wise to remember that. Suffice to say, Vernita Green doesn’t last long. Long enough to make a bloody mess in the first of many extraordinary martial-arts fight sequences. Vernita is second on The Bride’s must-kill grocery list. First is O-ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), third is Budd (Michael Madsen), fourth is Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and fifth is Bill himself. How, you may ask, did she survive being shot in the head? A metal plate in her skull and a four-year coma. Is that explanation enough? For a movie inspired by B-Westerns, Kung Fu Theater programmers and grimy ’70s crime pictures, yes. It’s plenty. What happened to the baby? Well, The Bride woke up and assumed her unborn daughter was dead. Needless to say, she’s been through enough to warrant an uber-stylish four-hour revenge spree, and only a mighty fool would debate that.

So Tarantino patches together all the stories relevant to The Bride’s little project. She visits the legendary swordmaker Hattori Hanzo (the legendary Sonny Chiba) and commissions a new weapon for herself. She travels to Tokyo to slash through gangster boss O-ren’s legion of guards, The Crazy 88. Right here is where the Vernita Green bit would fit if this were a linear narrative. Then she tracks down Budd in the desert but he catches her off guard and buries her alive. We flash back to her training under the ruthless and cruel master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu). She digs herself out and happens upon Elle Driver in Budd’s scuzzy trailer, so that’s a two birds/one stone sequence. Then she gets to tracking down Bill himself, who has a surprise for her. But I dunno if it’s enough to trump her deployment of the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique. It’s deadly. Might be the only means for Beatrix Kiddo to get some closure. That’s The Bride’s name. Beatrix Kiddo.

Kill Bill: Volume 2
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%
Fast forward to Kill Bill: Volume 2, the second installment in Tarantino’s martial arts franchise. The sequel sets up an epic face-off between the Bride and Bill, who is revealed to be her former lover and the father of her daughter, B.B. No spoilers here, but know this: Tarantino originally intended for Kill Bill to be a single film, so if you want the intended viewing experience, be sure to queue ’em up back-to-back.
[Stream Kill Bill: Volume 2 on Netflix] Photo: Miramax

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Sergio Leone super-closeups (my fave are in Once Upon a Time in the West), countless Asian martial arts flicks (Uma’s yellow motorcycle outfit is a big time reference to Bruce Lee movie Game of Death), TV’s Kung Fu and The Green Hornet – to name just a few.

Performance Worth Watching: Uma (is it OK if I call you Uma?) gives a no-exaggeration-necessary straight-up legendary put-through-the-wringer physical performance via chopsocky, swordplay and various miscellaneous instances of her dragging herself out of horrible situations covered with blood and/or filth – then she unleashes an emotional performance down the stretch that explores the extremities of surprise, tension and release until we’re all wrung out, exhilarated and exhausted right next to her. 

Sex And Skin: Do we count the trademark Tarantino foot-fetish shots? If not, then, none.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 & Vol. 2
Though these are technically two movies, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 were intended to be seen back-to-back as one magnum opus. Uma Thurman is a mad momma on a quest to murder the assassins who left her and her unborn child for dead — but everything’s not quite as simple as it seems. [Stream Kill Bill Vol. 1] & [Stream Kill Bill Vol. 2] Photo: Everett Collection

Our Take: Honestly, the changes Tarantino makes from the original films to The Whole Bloody Affair are ultimately pretty negligible, save for his excision of the Uma voiceover at the end of Volume 1, which trades a mid-film spoiler (or as it originally stood, a teaser for Volume 2) for a final-act whopper of a twist that deepens Beatrix’s emotional arc. The new anime addition is significant at seven-plus minutes, and finely executed, but more of a sidebar than a necessity (and the Fortnite animated-short tie-in, Kill Bill – The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge, tacked onto the end of the theatrical release, is AWOL in the at-home version, though you can find it on YouTube). Nitpickers will nitpick, but I’m not one of them.

Why no notes? Well, considering what we know about Tarantino’s original intentions, and our standing affection for the original films (which is considerable), this marathonic smushing-together of the Kill Bills just feels right. It flows. It feels significantly epic. It diminishes the false climax of the Crazy 88/O-ren mega-battle – a mind-blowing sequence that stands as the most technically brilliant of Tarantino’s career, part of it was originally presented in black-and-white to maintain an R rating, but is in full color here – and pushes the dramatic emphasis on the final reveal and confrontation with Bill. The story works just fine as two films, but as a single unified narrative, it’s bigger, grander, a slow burn spiked with violence, comedy and violent comedy, with tangents, references and tangential references. The ambition of Tarantino’s overall narrative structure is more prevalent, and dare I say literary, with thematic parallels revealing themselves in the signature wordy dialogue, and in several mirror shots and sequences. 

Although I argue that The Whole Bloody Affair is an improvement, I don’t see it elevating itself to the top shelf of Tarantino’s pantheon (it’ll never quite be on par with Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood or Jackie Brown). It might be his most entertaining film, considering its vibrant array of characters, wildly creative action sequences, cartoony flourishes, egregious displays of spurting blood, unhinged comedy and general reverence for cinema as the ultimate art form. It wouldn’t work without Uma’s commitment to Beatrix Kiddo’s maternal urges – as it turns out, she has more than one reason to kill Bill. 

Our Call: Revenge has rarely been sweeter. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.