“Kill Bill Vol. II” is an exercise in setup, while “Kill Bill Vol. I” was an exercise in payoff. After 90 minutes of such payoff with no setup, the audience is left exhausted. After two hours and 20 minutes of the backstory, we finally leave satisfied.

-When we see movies, we expect to see characters change. We expect to see a setup in which a problem is presented, then we expect to see this character confront the problem. By the end of the film, we expect a resolution.

In “Vol. II,” we are brought right back into the narrative of The Bride, a woman hell-bent on revenge. She’s out to kill the last surviving members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, a squadron of assassins of which she used to be a member.

As opposed to “Vol. I,” this second installment educates us as to why The Bride is so angry. We begin the film with her wedding day, meeting the young man with whom she was to share the rest of her life. Then Bill enters, and the film follows with a classic exchange of dialogue between he and The Bride, two former lovers.

The scene is quite memorable, like most in the film. Cinematographer Robert Richardson goes for black and white, gently overexposing the negative. This gives the characters an angelic glow that exaggerates as they move, giving the audience a sense of comfort before Bill’s squadron can move in and execute each character we just met.

Throughout “Vol. II,” we learn little secrets about all of the characters, giving them dimension, something “Vol. I” chooses to ignore. We even see The Bride’s grueling training from a Chinese expert named Pei Mei, a man whom Bill tells her “hates caucasians, despises Americans, and has nothing but contempt for women.” Such a line has the audience cringing when Pei Mei and The Bride finally meet.

What director Quentin Tarantino set out to do last October was turn the entire narrative storytelling structure upside down. This is nothing new for Tarantino. In 1994, he unleashed the ever popular “Pulp Fiction” onto the world, a film that had its main character die in the middle of the film, only to come back in the last act.

Tarantino loves to play with time, which can be a blessing or a curse. Instead of the audience wondering what will happen next or what happened prior, they worry about right now and whatever emotion is being flexed on the screen.

With his latest “Kill Bill” franchise in theaters, Tarantino took his chapter-style of filmmaking to a new level. He decided to unleash his new film in two volumes, one in October, another six months later. In my review of “Vol. I” I wrote, “The film’s only setback is its separation into two volumes. … It not only hurts the impact on the audience’s experience, but it doesn’t help having to shell out twice the price to see a full feature film.”

I thought about how I felt after seeing “Vol. I,” and I now believe that the separation works. While “Vol. I” was a revenge filled gore fest, “Vol. II” chooses to create tension through dialogue and sound design.

There was hardly a flicker of blood through most of “Vol. II,” but I found myself on the edge of my seat much more often. If anything, I believe that Tarantino could have made a better film had he released “Vol. II” first. Seeing The Bride’s gruesome road to revenge (“Vol. I”) would have been so much sweeter to see for the first time had we already known the full impact her success would have on her life (“Vol. I”).

While I enjoyed “Vol. I” as much as any superbly made Hollywood popcorn movie, I was moved by the narrative in “Vol. II” as much as any brooding Hollywood drama. Perhaps seeing both of these films in one sitting would be too much for the senses, let alone our stomachs.

I was the first to roll my eyes when I heard that this egomaniac named Quentin Tarantino was planning on making a third installment to this franchise 15 years down the road. But after seeing “Vol. II,” 2019 can’t come soon enough.