It’s been taken down from their website, but I was able to find Empire’s review of the full Kill Bill
[quote]Although the Croisette was crawling with press this year, few seemed to notice the wording on the final day’s screening schedule: “Integrale Kill Bill.” Perhaps they were bored of QT after 11 days of him, or perhaps they couldn’t face four hours indoors, but it seems there were few journalists there to see him introduce the first screening ever, ever, ever of the full, run-on Kill Bill. Dressed in jeans and a black Kill Bill T-shirt that didn’t do much for his beer-belly, QT looked tanned and relaxed as he took the stage, bowing to a standing ovation. With simultaneous translation from festival head Thierry Fremaux, Tarantino explained that this was not simply one volume after another but the full deal, featuring the Asian cut of Volume One, with a few trims, and the standard Volume Two (minus the ‘‘roaring rampage of revenge’’ driving sequence used in the trailer). This version, he revealed, will go out in a roadshow version in a year’s time, with a five-minute intermission - with music from the film - acting as a cigarette break for the restless.
To be honest, with the festival re-screening all its movies, Empire planned only on staying for the first half, to see what all the fuss was about. Surprisingly, and even though the full cut isn’t that much different, we wound up staying for the whole thing. And it was, to be honest, a revelation. The film we had misgivings about as two halves plays brilliantly as a whole movie, giving more depth to The Bride and balancing out the action sequences with the slower, character-led scenes. Given the entire timeline, it also establishes the chain of events, bringing home the sense that the DiVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) have drifted apart during The Bride’s four-year coma.
Most crucially, the full KB places proper emphasis on the controversial Superman speech at the end of Volume Two. As well as being a wry joke at his own expense (The Bride is forced to listen to Bill’s rambling theory while waiting for his truth serum to hit), it perfectly crystallises the key theme of the movie. Here, Tarantino pulls the rug, revealing that the woman we feel so much empathy for is nothing a but a stone-cold killer, passing for human in the same way Superman poses as Clark Kent. The Bride is Bill’s equal and much more, which is why only one can survive, because the other can’t be trusted. In one sitting, her respect for Bill becomes more distinct: Vernita Green, O-Ren Ishii, Elle Driver and Budd bring down the red fog of fury (signalled by bursts of the Ironside theme), but Bill himself gets a smile, even in the prelude to the final showdown.
So now we come to the stuff you really want to know. Well, surprisingly, there’s not too much difference. Although it still begins with the subtitle Vol. One, the Klingon proverb is gone, replaced by a dedication to Kinji Fukasaku. Unsurprisingly, all the major differences occur in this half, which, as you might expect, is a pretty sick ride. The Vernita Green fight is slightly different (no gore) and the anime sequence is more explicit in the details of O-Ren’s revenge killing, but the biggest difference, of course, is the House Of Blue Leaves battle. No longer in coy B&W, with close-up amputations and throat-slitting, the scene now plays like a berserk mix of 1960s TV Batman and Monty Python circa Holy Grail. The effect is quite surreal, more explicitly funny, and softens up the audience for the return of Gordon Liu - the mentalist Green Hornet figure -as the cruel martial arts guru Pai Mei. It also paves the way for Volume One’s true ending. Not the cliffhanger about the baby, (that mercifully has gone, seeing as Vol 1’‘s desire to end on an unecessary ‘‘oooh’’ moment, only served to spoil Vol 2’‘s big twist ending), but the full wrath of The Bride coming down on Sofie Fatale, who winds up with a 50 per cent limb deficit in full, blood-on-the-lens technicolour.
The Bride’s speech to Fatale is sure to go down as a twisted QT classic. “I want you to tell him all the information you just told me,” she screams. "I want him to know what I know. I want him to know I want him to know. And I want them all to know they’'ll all soon be as dead as O-Ren." Which is where Tarantino’s particular genius comes into play. Like True Romance or Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill plays with the concept of pop culture ciphers having real lives, and it truly is the trash-movie epic he promised. Vernita Green has married a doctor, Budd cleans toilets in a strip bar and when the vile Pai Mei blinds her, Elle Driver simply poisons his dinner. It’s a film that rides wave after wave of action and bathos, which paves the way for its (anti)climax and makes more sense in one sitting, piling up tropes and cliche’s from every grindhouse flick imaginable. Indeed, although everyone suddenly became a grindhouse expert after Vol. One, few seemed to remember that even the most violent B-movie has its dull-arse moments of daft exposition.
In two parts, the film seemed like a cash-in, and the fact that QT diehards will pay up to five times (including DVD releases) for the privilege of seeing it didn’t help. But as one whole movie, you get the sense that Tarantino was testing the water. In one go, it would have seemed patchy and self-indulgent and most likely would have tanked. This way, though, QT introduced us to one half, then the other, warming us up to the prospect of the full, four-hour monty. In one go, there’s no longer the shock of the new, or the misleading expectation that QT has something mind-blowing up his sleeve. These characters come alive on the screen, especially Thurman’s Bride, and stay in the brain, so much so that, even after four hours, you might be tempted to stay in your seat and see it again.
Time will be kind to Kill Bill, that’s for sure, and given time to breathe, and without the weight of hype, it will reveal itself as the film Tarantino intended it to be. It may even, dare we say it, be his best film. But history will be the judge of that.
(5 stars)
REVIEWED BY DAMON WISE[/quote]