‘Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair’ Review: Quentin Tarantino’s Epic Finally Arrives as He Intended

The Bride is back, and there’s hell to pay. Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” is playing in theaters this holiday season over two decades after “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” and “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” took audiences by storm in the early aughts.

At a whopping 275 minutes, “The Whole Bloody Affair” offers resolution to Tarantino’s longstanding issue with the “Kill Bill” releases. You see, “Vol. 1” and “Vol. 2” were always meant to be one film. However, producers at Miramax stepped in and insisted the film be split, resulting in reshoots and the originally planned structure of the story to be re-cut (Tarantino felt that audiences needed the cliffhanger to return for Vol. 2). Because of the narrative restructure and the addition of anime components to the overall story, it’s impossible to simply re-watch “Vol. 1” and “Vol. 2” back to back and get the same experience as “The Whole Bloody Affair”. In the final version, we get not just the two films as they were originally intended to be seen, but also an extended anime sequence added into the mix. Additionally, the theatrical version has seven minutes of footage from the new Fortnite tie-in after the credits. 

While you can’t simply stack the two films and call them the definitive cut, there’s also no sense in relitigating pre-existing facts: these stories and the majority of their components are universally beloved regardless of the order of which they take place. The action is stellar, the performances pitch-perfect, the music is an all-timer and visually both films are stone-cold stunners. Those aspects were always going to ring true in the final release. 

Still, “The Whole Bloody Affair” offers an interesting conundrum, critically. On one hand, a movie pushing five hours is absurd. On the other, restructuring of the story to shift when the audience finds out the fate of Beatrix’s (Uma Thurman) daughter B.B (Perla Haney-Jardine) is absolutely a better version of the film. Meanwhile, the additional anime sequence expanding on O-ren Ishii’s (Lucy Lui) history is a wonderfully gory new texture to the film. Though you’d expect an errant anime sequence to feel out of place in a live-action story, the over-the-top nature of “Kill Bill” means that anime studio Production I.G.’s sequence fits right in.

This ultimately takes us to the question of whether not the ends justify the means when it comes to the narrative impact hitting harder at the cost of a nearly five-hour chunk of time.

Generically, the answer to the above question is a universal “no.” What’s been made is simply a mini-series at that point. For Tarantino superfans, “The Whole Bloody Affair” will likely be an exception to the rule. However, broadly speaking, the added anime and action aren’t enough to justify sitting in a movie theater until you yourself are left uttering “wiggle your big toe.” 

Perhaps a good way to explain it is with the O-ren anime expansion itself. It’s a decent addition to the story, is well animated, and gives depth to a character that we’re already interested in. However, with so many hours in the story, it’s hard for the side quest into the Deadly Viper’s past to feel like anything other than bloat. It creates the internet-hated conundrum of two truths: the sequence is a meaningful addition to the story while also making an already overlong epic even longer.

Beyond the anime expansion, “The Whole Bloody Affair” delivers on its promise of more violence and gore. However, the addition is broadly unnecessary. That sentiment isn’t delivered because of prudishness, mind you. The violence of “Kill Bill” is one of its many charms. The issue here is that there’s already so much of it that the majority of the additional action simply blends in with the rest. Unless you spend an entire day watching “Vol. 1”, “Vol. 2” and “The Whole Bloody Affair” back-to-back, you’re not going to notice much of a difference in the live-action bloodshed.

What the length of the project doesn’t manage to do is take away from the story’s conclusion. Perhaps part of that can be attributed to the fact that you know you’re at the final stretch at last by the time Beatrix kicks down Bill’s (David Carradine) door — a feeling that should under no circumstance exist when you’re watching an an otherwise great story — but mostly it sits with the emotional gut-punch of B.B.’s existence and the audience experiencing it at the same time as our protagonist.

This version of the ending takes place exactly as Tarantino had originally planned, and has existed in the overall “canon” since the director shared a version of the cut with Cannes International Film Festival back in 2006. There was some worry going in that knowing when the B.B. reveal originally happens might take away from the experience, but that concern was unfounded. Though the length of the project is otherwise burdensome, learning that B.B. survived at the same time as Beatrix adds quite a bit to an already impactful ending.

Meanwhile, tacking the Fortnite footage of “The Lost Chapter: Kiki’s Revenge” onto this bad boy was a mistake. While it’s reasonable to harp on how overlong the story becomes in “The Whole Bloody Affair,” it’s at least understandable why most of the “new” additions exist in Tarantino’s final vision. “Kiki’s Revenge”, however, is a chore. While the anime chapter fits right in, the Fortnite expansion is both hideous and unnecessary. This plays as a post-credit scene rather than something slipped into the narrative, but its addition only serves as a final reminder that Tarantino needs to edit himself. 

In the end, “The Whole Bloody Affair” doesn’t do enough (or perhaps does far too much) to justify its existence to the everyday cinephile. However, Tarantino superfans will undoubtedly lap the film up like cream and, in the end, a director got the opportunity to finally share his true vision with the rest of the world. That’s a net win here.

“Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” is now playing in theaters in the U.S. and U.K.

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