Streaming Sleepers: In KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR, You Get What You Paid For, More Than Twenty Years Later
The arrival of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies in 2003 and 2004 helped set a new precedent in the West for expectations in action entertainment, anchored formatively by the second Hong Kong crossover wave of the 90s. Coupled with a mosaic of cinema tropes from the likes of Bruce Lee, Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa among the lot, it’s Tarantino’s fourth and fifth films here that firmly meets the moment with a euphoric action epic that not only checks off as many boxes as it does, but also continues to live on more than two decades later as a singular edit fans can now find on disc and digital in the form of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.
I’ll skip all the familiar plot points in this post as opposed to regurgitating the obvious. Yes, you get all the Kill Bill goods of the initial films – everything inclusive of The Bride’s (Uma Thurman) mission of bloody revenge and whatnot against her former killer cohabitators and lover. No, not all of the footage is there, but it’s no hassle and doesn’t really change the experience of the movie overall. In fact, very few bits of the collective movie have been changed; There’s one minor subtraction leading up to the two minute intermission, and the animated sequence produced by Production I.G. included in Kill Bill: Vol 1 gets an extension of about seven or eight more minutes, fleshing out even more explosive and gory backstory for the villanous O-Ren Ishii. The best part about Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair is that you get the House Of Blue Leaves fight sequence featured entirely in color as opposed to its earlier black-and-white depiction.
Honestly, this is the version of Kill Bill we should’ve gotten twenty years ago. My only gripe is that a deleted scene between Bill (David Carradine) and a character played by Michael Jai White still couldn’t find its way into this cut. I think it would’ve been cool to see how it would’ve played out in this newer cut. Oh well.
Anyway, you can buy Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair on disc or digital or stream it wherever available (I caught it over at Peacock). If you’ve ever enjoyed the Kill Bill movies, by all means, take four hours to indulge in The Whole Bloody Affair for yourselves, and tell a friend!
Streaming Sleepers is a column attributed to movie titles currently available on legitimate VOD/SVOD and digital platforms.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
