But the film isn’t without controversy. Some critics call it one of the most violent movies ever made. Some are shocked that the film was able to earn an R rating. The 20 kill minimum is easy found within the first few scenes. 

Here is a sampling of what the "critics" have to say. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle calls the film , "a 90-minute orgy of endless sword fights, multiple severed limbs and gushing blood. It boggles the mind that after six years of silence, all Tarantino has to offer is this garbage." Fans of the film of course had a entirely different opinion.

The film, which stars Uma Thurman, mixes the action-revenge genre with the classic kung-fu formula with lots of extra gore thrown in. (see synopsis below)

As the title suggests the film is being released in two parts, Vol. 2 is expected to hit theatres early in the new year. 

Official Synopsis (warning may contain spoilers)

The fourth movie by Quentin Tarantino is an epic tale of one woman’s quest for justice presented in two installments. In Kill Bill— Vol. 1 the title character, played by DAVID CARRADINE, is a mostly unseen sinister figure looming over the story who has organized an elite group called the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (or DiVAS).

All of the vipers are code-named after poisonous serpents and the deadliest of them all is Black Mamba (UMA THURMAN), who is also Bill’s former lover.

Early in Vol. 1 a Texas Ranger (MICHAEL PARKS) surveys a grisly scene: an entire wedding party slaughtered during a dress rehearsal in a rural chapel. The pregnant woman in the blood-splattered wedding dress is Black Mamba, better known as The Bride.

Bill and The Vipers left The Bride for dead, but unluckily for them she was merely comatose.  The Viper assassin California Mountain Snake, a.k.a. Elle Driver (DARYL HANNAH), creeps into The Bride’s hospital room, disguised as a nurse and brandishing a syringe— only to be called off at the last possible moment by Bill himself.

Four years later, The Bride suddenly awakens and realizes what has been done to her. She disposes of the hospital orderly (MICHAEL BOWEN) who has been auctioning off her (immobile) sexual favors, confiscates his garish “Pussy Wagon,” and sets off on a ferociously focused mission.

Her first target among the wedding massacre participants is the Viper known as Cottonmouth, O-Ren Ishii (LUCY LIU). At seven O-Ren hid only inches away as her parents were killed. At age eleven she took her own bloody revenge, and has since become the first female boss-of-all-bosses of the Japanese yakuza underworld.

In Okinawa, The Bride acquires a legendary bladed weapon from the last of the world’s great samurai sword-smiths, the legendary ninjitsu master Hattori Honzo (SONNY CHIBA).

In Tokyo, O-Ren Ishii is surrounded by her lethal henchmen and holds court in a massive nightclub/restaurant complex, the House of Blue Leaves. The Bride’s assault upon this Kill Bill Vol. 1 – 2 stronghold is a pitched martial arts battle with hundreds of black clad soldiers of O-Ren’s personal shock squad, The Crazy 88s. The assault also includes personal showdowns with two of O-Ren’s top aides, her personal assistant, Sophie Fatale (JULIE DREYFUSS), and her private bodyguard Go Go Yubari (CHIAKI KURIYAMA).

The assault culminates in a classic, tragic snowy standoff between these two formidable warriors, O-Ren Ishii and The Bride. We begin to sense that the quest for justice could exact a heavy emotional toll upon The Bride.

A few days later, in Pasadena, California, The Bride has moved on to her second knockdown-drag-out battle with a Viper target, Copperhead, a.k.a. Vernita Green (VIVICA A. FOX).  The presence of Vernita’s young daughter at the scene adds a note of grim irony to the tale of a widowed mother’s quest for retribution.

In the aftermath of the epic Tokyo battle, Bill appears on screen for the first time to question the fight’s sole survivor, Sophie Fatale, about The Bride’s intentions.

“Does she know,” Bill asks Sophie, “that her daughter is still alive?”

In Kill Bill— Vol. 2 the emotional momentum that builds throughout Vol. 1 will achieve its cathartic resolution, as The Bride goes through the remaining Vipers (including MICHAEL MADSEN’s Sidewinder) to reach the man himself, the father of her child, and make a deeply poignant discovery.
 
 

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