From the opening title card proclaiming the film to be in “ShawScope” and the grainy, rainbow-patterned “Our Feature Presentation” clip that follows, it’s obvious that Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” is his grindhouse opus. Or at least half of it. Regardless, the movie revels in its chopsocky and giallo roots so feverishly that it would be difficult not to want to play along.

Uma Thurman stars as The Bride, a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, headed by the mysterious Bill (David Carradine, seen here only from the shoulders down). When she gets pregnant and attempts to leave her criminal past behind, Bill orders the Squad to
strike down her and the entire wedding party. But she survives and slips into a coma. When she awakens four years later—entropied, childless and bitter to the core—she literally makes out a
five-point checklist of people to kill.

End of story.

“Vol. 1” is simply Uma making her way through roughly half that list, tracking Viveca A. Fox to her new suburban-mom lifestyle and locating Lucy Liu, a Tokyo underworld boss, at The House
of Blue Leaves, a restaurant and club that serves as the movie’s immense, bloody, balls-out showdown. The action comes fast and furious and—in order to secure an R rating—sometimes in black-and-white. Blood spurts as it does in old-school samurai classics and 42nd St. staples like “Shogun Assassin”—like geysers. Yet the effect, in true Tarantino fashion, is comical. Never do you feel that the violence is real. Tarantino’s simple revenge tale has fun hopping drive-in genres, even switching to animation to tell the origin of Liu’s bloodthirsty character.

But what truly makes the movie is Uma. (Ethan Hawke, you are a stupid, stupid man.) She’s obviously gorgeous, but you’d never expect to see her kicking ***censored*** believably as she does here. The woman knows her way around a big, thick samurai sword and looks great even when drenched
in the entrails of her enemies. She receives great support from the other actors—it’s nice in particular to see “Street Fighter” Sonny Chiba excel in a straight dramatic role—but make no mistake: “Kill Bill” is all Uma.

It would be easy to overpraise this movie; it’s not the year’s best nor the most fun, but it’s an absolutely solid good time. I wanted “Vol. 2” to start rolling immediately, partly because I didn’t want it to end, and partly because it does feel like half a movie. But that half a movie is more tense and exciting than anything else right now.