Read all about Kill Bill, Volume 1.

Salon didn't care for it. CNN calls it "bloody well done", saying that asking a viewer to talk about the film brought "a pleasured gurgling sound as if he were Homer Simpson viewing a box of doughnuts." They also say that if the audience reacts the way the critics have, the movie will be as big as "The Matrix."

The Washington Post's Desson Howe says: He has emerged from years of silence, this Quentin Tarantino. But judging by "Kill Bill, Vol. 1," the first of a two-part pop epic, he hasn't lost a trick.

NYT's AO Scott notes that the rated-R film, which he calls "above all, an exercise in style", also "has shootings, stabbings, beatings, beheadings, disembowelings, amputations, mutilations, eye-gougings, slicings, choppings, bitings and a spanking. Also some naughty words."