{"id":13606,"date":"2025-12-09T15:15:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13606"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T22:47:08","slug":"kill-bill-the-whole-bloody-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/12\/09\/kill-bill-the-whole-bloody-affair\/","title":{"rendered":"Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 275 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unrated (strong bloody violence and gore, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Quentin Tarantino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Robert Rodriguez and RZA\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Richardson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 5, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks, Michael Bowen, Jun Kunimura, Kenji Oba, Yuki Kazamatsuri, James Parks, Sakichi Sato, Jonathan Loughran, Tetsuro Shimaguchi, Kazuki Kitamura, Yoji Boba Tanaka, Issei Takahashi, So Yamanaka, Juri Manase, Akaji Maro, Goro Daimon, Shun Sugata, Jin Zhan Zhang, Xiaohui Hu, Ambrosia Kelley, The 5.6.7.8s (Sachiko Fujii, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, Ronnie Yoshiko Fujiyama), Bo Svenson, Jeannie Epper, Stephanie L. Moore, Shana Stein, Caitlin Keats, Chris Nelson, Samuel L. Jackson, Reda Beebe, Sid Haig, Larry Bishop, Laura Cayouette, Clark Middleton, Perla Haney-Jardine.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can now cross something off my movie bucket list. For two decades, I\u2019ve wanted to see Kill Bill as originally envisioned by writer-director Quentin Tarantino. It was supposed to have been released as one film, but Miramax wasn\u2019t willing to gamble on audiences turning out for a four-hour movie. They gave QT a choice, either cut it down (WAY down!) or split it into two parts. The filmmaker opted for the latter titling them Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. They were released about six months apart, October 2003 and April 2004 respectively, to critical and commercial success. I enjoyed them both, but I hoped to someday see it in its original long form. The movie gods finally granted my wish.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was elated to hear that Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong> would finally be making its way to cinemas. Although it originally premiered at Cannes in 2006, QT wanted to wait until he owned the rights to give it a proper theatrical release. He did, however, screen it in 2011 at his New Beverly Theater in L.A. where it went over well. So how does the whole differ from the two-part version? Structurally, it\u2019s really no different. QT doesn\u2019t rearrange the events of the story in chronological order a la the Godfather Saga. It\u2019s basically Vol. 1 followed by Vol. 2 with an intermission in between. Content is another story.<\/p>\n

\u00a0My biggest gripe about the otherwise perfect Vol. 1 was the switch to black-and-white when The Bride (Thurman, Pulp Fiction) fought the Crazy 88s at the House of the Blue Leaves club. That was a studio decision; they did it to avoid an NC-17 rating. QT restores the insanely bloody sequence to its original blood-red glory. We\u2019re talking copious amounts of spurt and severed limbs. It looks amazing. In addition, the anime sequence depicting the backstory of O-Ren (Liu, Charlie\u2019s Angels) has been expanded to include a fight between the young girl and one of the baddies responsible for her parents\u2019 murders. It too is extremely bloody. Hey, who doesn\u2019t love a good splatter-toon?<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are some who feel that Kill Bill is too self-indulgent on QT\u2019s part. They\u2019re not entirely wrong. He tends to revel in the things he loves. It\u2019s a good thing I like the same things he does. He pays tribute to his favorite genres in Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong>, kung fu movies (Vol. 1) and spaghetti westerns (Vol. 2) in particular. He kicks things right off by opening with the classic Shaw Brothers logo (\u201cShaw Scope\u201d) followed by the iconic \u201cOur Feature Presentation\u201d intro replete with Funky Fanfare music. He proceeds to take us on a four-hour journey through grindhouse\/exploitation movie heaven. We get Yakuza bosses and masked assassins, a swordsmith (Sonny Chiba) and kung fu master (Gordon Liu), a seedy strip club, a wedding massacre, a cool anime sequence, split-screen effects, a hit squad whose members are named after deadly snakes and the eponymous leader of said hit squad (\u201cThe Deadly Vipers\u201d). There are call-outs to great exploitation classics like Thriller- A Cruel Picture (1973), Lady Snowblood (1973) and Game of Death (1978). It has musical cues from Twisted Nerve (1968), The Grand Duel (1972) and Truck Turner (1974). There are treats aplenty for connoisseurs of exploitation cinema. Same goes for foot fetishists. This is QT we\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve learned not to assume everybody is familiar with a movie just because it\u2019s been around for twenty years. I saw Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong> with a young friend (hey, Chris!) who never saw the Kill Bill movies. I was only too glad to welcome him to the weird, wonderful universe created by QT. For the benefit of the uninitiated, here is a plot overview. The Bride, an ex-member of the Deadly Vipers, is ambushed on her wedding day by her former boss Bill (Carradine, Kung Fu) and colleagues- Vernita aka Copperhead (Fox, Independence Day), O-Ren aka Cottonmouth (Liu), Budd aka Sidewinder (Madsen, Reservoir Dogs) and Elle Driver aka California Mountain Snake (Hannah, Blade Runner). Bride survives the massacre, but ends up in coma. She wakes up four years later with vengeance on her mind.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m not going to get into all the details, but the road to revenge leads to and ends with Bill. They were once lovers and he didn\u2019t take too kindly to her walking away after finding out she was pregnant. I\u2019ll tell you this, there\u2019s a surprise waiting for her at Bill\u2019s home in Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In my original reviews (long since lost), I awarded four stars to Vol. 1 and three to Vol. 2. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong> gets three and a half stars. It\u2019s great, but not perfect. It has the same problem as all of QT\u2019s films. It\u2019s too dialogue-heavy at times. The man doesn\u2019t know when to end a scene. Some run too long. He loves to hear himself talk. He writes great dialogue, but it tends to slow down the momentum of the movie. Take the end of the second part. Before they finally fight, Bill feels compelled to deliver a long monologue about Superman and dual identities. It\u2019s interesting, but I just wanted him and Bride to get down to it. When they finally do, the fight lasts all of 30 seconds. It\u2019s a minor hiccup in an otherwise great movie.<\/p>\n

\u00a0QT put together an awesome cast for Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong>. Uma is magnificently bad ass as The Bride, real name Beatrix Kiddo. Here\u2019s a woman who\u2019s been horrendously wrong by people she once trusted. She\u2019s angry but calculating. She keeps a cool head as she goes about exacting her revenge. Originally, QT wanted Warren Beatty to play Bill, but the actor backed out due to \u201ccreative differences\u201d. That\u2019s when the filmmaker turned to Carradine. He adapted the character to fit the Kung Fu star\u2019s style and a great antagonist was born. He\u2019s simply GREAT! Fox, Liu, Madsen and Hannah make a cool foursome. Liu\u2019s character, a Yakuza boss who doesn\u2019t appreciate remarks about her Chinese-Japanese lineage, is especially interesting. Cold and brutal, she\u2019s a perfect match for The Bride.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I love that QT includes kung fu movie legends Sonny Chiba (The Street Fighter) and Gordon Liu (The 36th<\/sup> Chamber of Shaolin). Liu (no relation to Lucy) is especially fun as Pai Mei, the old martial arts teacher who accepts Bride as his student. His scenes are a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong> is a remarkable achievement. I\u2019d even say it\u2019s epic. Sure, the first half is a bit stronger than the second which tends to drag here and there. Again, this is just a minor glitch. It\u2019s easy to overlook in a film chock full of cinematic goodies. As per usual for QT, the soundtrack is perfectly on point. He opens with Nancy Sinatra\u2019s haunting \u201cBang Bang\u201d and keeps it going with musical cues from a variety of sources and songs by Santa Esmeralda (\u201cDon\u2019t Let Me Be Misunderstood\u201d), The Human Beinz (\u201cNobody But Me\u201d), Johnny Cash (\u201cA Satisfied Mind\u201d) and female Tokyo rock band The 5.6.7.8s who also appear in the film (sans footwear, of course).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let me give it to you in a nutshell. Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair<\/strong> is great! It deserves to be seen on the big screen. Be sure to stick around for the end credits. There\u2019s a bonus animated sequence entitled \u201cThe Lost Chapter: Yuki\u2019s Revenge\u201d. It was part of QT\u2019s original screenplay, but he never filmed it due to costs. It\u2019s now connected to the video game Fortnite. Chris had to explain that to me. I had no idea why there was a guy dressed like banana running around.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 275 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unrated (strong bloody violence and gore, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Quentin Tarantino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Robert Rodriguez and RZA\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Richardson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: December 5, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Julie Dreyfus, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Kill-Bill-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C930&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13609,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13606\/revisions\/13609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}