Spoilers coming up: More than a decade on, Quentin Tarantino's two-volume martial arts epic stands proud as one of his most satisfying films, thanks mainly to its surprising emotional arc. Having begun as a revenge story, with the betrayed and left for dead Beatrix seeking vengeance on the former colleagues who killed her husband and unborn child, Kill Bill ultimately becomes a redemptive story of a mother reunited with the child she thought she'd lost. While there's long been talk of a third Kill Bill, Tarantino has said that part of the reason he's avoided that was his desire to let Beatrix have her happy ending. And there's no denying it's a happy ending she has earned: over the course of the two movies we see her endure the harshest of martial arts training, awake from a coma, escape from a hospital whilst numb from the waist down, traverse the globe, battle dozens of skilled opponents to the death, and dig her way out of a coffin, But at the end of it all - she's got her little girl back. Who'd have thought such a violent and bloody enterprise would conclude on such a sweet note?
