Uma Thurman wreaks more havoc in a bloodthirsty thriller The Bride has two remaining foes on her Death List to pursue Budd and Elle Driver before moving on to her ultimate goal to kill Bill in the concluding part of Quentin Tarantino's latest film.

In Kill Bill Vol 1, actor David Carradine was almost entirely a sinister presence behind the scenes, a familiar, seductive, baritone voice murmuring on the soundtrack - despite the fact that he played the movie's title role.

But along with Uma Thurman, who continues to cut a wide swath as the revenge-driven Bride, "David dominates Volume 2," according to writer-director Tarantino.

"When I tell people the name of the movie is Kill Bill," says Carradine, "and that I'm Bill, they ask me: Well, what are you, the bad guy?' And I have to tell them, There are no good guys in a Quentin Tarantino movie. It's all about the bad guys.' "The essence of a Tarantino movie is an inside look at the minds and hearts of violent people. That's what we go to see his movies for. It's climbing inside these people's psyches and showing what makes them tick."

In Vol 1, we learned that Bill, a broker of killers for hire, had assembled and trained a ruthless assortment of assassins, the so-called Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.

The lethal weapon known as Black Mamba, played by Thurman, the most talented of them all, was also Bill's lover, and she became a fugitive from the assassination game when she learned that she was pregnant with his child.

At that moment, her worldview shifted on its axis. She no longer wanted to kill or to put her life in mortal danger. She changed her name, hid out in a small town, and found herself a kind and stable man to marry.

But Bill was not about to let this situation stand. We caught a few glimpses of the result early in Kill Bill Vol 1 with the wreckage left behind when Bill and the Vipers assaulted a tiny rural chapel and slaughtered everyone in sight. Vol 2 gives us, for the first time, a full account of the wedding rehearsal massacre that sets the plot of this two-part epic in motion.

After fending off attacks from Bill's trailer-trash kid brother Budd (Michael Madsen) and her chief rival within the Squad, Daryl Hannah's Elle Driver, The Bride tracks her ultimate quarry to his lair in Mexico.

"When you put the two parts of the movie together," says David Carradine, "it really is an epic, as big as the stuff that David Lean did. It's still the Quentin Tarantino world, but on a different scale."

Daryl Hannah worked on the assumption in her performance that Elle Driver was a former Interpol agent who at some point caught up with Bill and tried to arrest him, only to be seduced and "turned." "The Bride used to be Bill's girl and now Elle Driver is Bill's girl. So Elle really wants to see The Bride go. She wants to be the one to finish her off," says Hannah.

She jumped at the chance to work with Tarantino, adding: "I'd never played a full-out villain before, so I was really excited when I realised what a bad ass Elle Driver was."

Uma Thurman says the characters that have always inspired her most are people who have indomitable spirits and who get back up when they are knocked down.

"It's not important for me to watch someone who just wins; it's important to me to watch someone who loses and fights to play again," explains the actress.

"That's what moves me and this character is like that in spades. And that's life.

"This is a total fantasy, a mad movie but there's something of that kind of courage and bravery at the centre of this character, and love at the centre of this character, albeit love turned to anger, love turned to hate and turned back to love again. That's what I find most compelling about it."