A pregnant woman's wedding day is ruined when the snake-monickered Deadly Viper Assassination Squad turns up and massacres the entire party. However, the bride survives a bullet to the head, and awakens from a coma four years later with only one thing on her mind - revenge. She was once a member of the Squad, and swears to kill the quartet responsible for the death of her unborn child and their boss, the mysterious Bill.

Quentin Tarantino has never made any secret of his influences and inspirations. The guy barely stops talking about them and these influences have only enhanced the reputation of his films. "Kill Bill" is his most obvious cinematic love letter yet - it is pure homage, and many of his trademarks are absent. The dialogue is sparse, and two brief allusions to Star Trek are the only pop-culture references; indeed the film barely seems to take place in the real world at all. Yet Kill Bill: Volume 1 remains a hugely entertaining blast of exploitation art, put together with love and wit and free from virtually all modern Hollywood conventions.

In the first part of The Bride's quest, Uma Thurman's angel of vengeance is never given a name (and is hilariously 'bleeped' out when uttered onscreen!) Her search leads her to Japan in search of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), codename Cottonmouth, who now heads the Tokyo underworld. Whereas Volume 2 puts the emphasis on kung-fu as The Bride hits China, it's Japanese sword-play and Yakuza flicks that influence here.

The blood sprays, fountain-like, from the severed limbs of Ishii's henchmen as Thurman slices her way to her quarry. Indeed, part of the spectacular, climatic tea house showdown is so relentlessly bloody that it switches to striking black & white to presumably make the scene a little more censor-friendly. In a world away from Reservoir Dogs' ear-slicing and torture, KB's violence is ludicrous and often hilarious.

The exploitation influences are further revealed in such devices as wild camera zooms, over-dramatic musical stabs, a 10-minute anime flashback revealing O-Ren Ishii's origins, the presence of martial arts icons Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu, and a score that runs the gamut from Japanese girl pop to Spaghetti Western twanging and Blaxploitation funk. Nancy Sinatra's stunning opening credits version of "Bang Bang" is gorgeously appropriate in its lyrical content.

To his credit, Tarantino also brings an arresting visual style that many of his favourite films would have lacked. The cinematography is subtle and hardly the gaudy cartoon style one would have expected, and there are some genuinely beautiful moments: a sword fight silhouetted against a glowing blue backdrop, and a haunting confrontation in a snow-bound garden.

The director is still unwilling to let conventional structure get in the way of his storytelling, and the powerhouse opening fight between The Bride and Vernita Green/Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox) is actually the last thing to happen chronologically. We barely see anything of Bill. We hear David Carradine's voice and see his hands, but never his face. Likewise, the other two members of the Squad - Michael Madsen's Budd/Sidewinder and Daryl Hannah's Elle Driver/California Mountain Snake, figure more heavily in Vol. 2 as The Bride makes her vengeful way to them.

The cast adopt a suitably melodramatic tone, and the sight of a sword-wielding Uma Thurman, blooded and steely-eyed in her yellow Game of Death jumpsuit, easily usurps The Matrix's Trinity as the year's most iconic warrior princess. Thurman is utterly breathtaking throughout - a staggering performance.

So does Vol, 1 work as a film in its own right? The decision to split the picture in two has been a controversial one, and whatever Tarantino says, it was Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein's call. There is an enormously violent climax and the appetite is whetted by a fantastic twist in the closing seconds. The whole thing is divided into chapters, and with Vol. 2 it will all slot into place. One can hardly blame Weinstein for wanting to hedge his bets financially - a good third of the film is subtitled, and Tarantino's admirable unwillingness to dilute his vision has resulted in a movie that will feel deeply strange to mainstream cinemagoers. Kill Bill may divide audiences even more than Jackie Brown did, but this is nevertheless seriously enjoyable, audacious stuff.