Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Kill Bill is the fourth film by writer-director Quentin Tarantino. Originally conceived as one film, it was released in two separate volumes (in Fall 2003 and Spring 2004) due to its running time of approximately four hours. The movie is an epic-length revenge drama, with homages to earlier film genres, such as Hong Kong martial arts movies and Italian Spaghetti Westerns; an extensive use of popular music and pop culture references; and deliberately over-the-top bloodletting.

Kill Bill is the story of a professional assassin, initially identified only as “The Bride”, who works for a man named Bill. Discovering she is pregnant with Bill’s child, and despairing of the life the little girl will lead if raised by her father, The Bride arranges her own disappearance. Bill hunts her down, and on the day before she is to be married, directs the massacre of her entire wedding party. Miraculously, she survives, emerging from a coma four years later, her memory of the incident intact. She proceeds to make a numbered “death list” of the assassins, ending with the name “Bill,” and sets out to enact her revenge.

Stars of the films include Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Julie Dreyfus, Michael Parks, Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu and Samuel L. Jackson.