Violence, profanity and rock and roll; director Quentin Tarantino’s latest offering, Kill Bill Vol. 1, has it all. This movie breaks Tarantino’s five-year directorial absence. His movies include Reservoir Dogs, From Dusk till Dawn, Four Rooms, Jackie Brown and his popular work, Pulp Fiction.

Kill Bill is a typical Tarantino film in that it is unlike anything you have ever seen before. As director, he takes all of the things that he likes best, Kung Fu, ’70s funk rock and uniquely stereotypical characters.

The film focuses on the character played by Uma Thurman, “Black Mamba,” as she embarks on a slaughter-fest of revenge against her old gang “The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad,” after awaking from a four-year coma. The Vipers consist of David Carradine, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox and Michael Madsen.

The movie is creative and smart, but in my opinion, gratuitously violent.

In Kill Bill, he attempts to make a cool parody of classic Kung Fu movies that alternately worships and mocks the genre.

The violence is explicit, but not realistic. Thurman goes on a rampage, dismembering hundreds of expendable ninjas. Projectile streams of blood shoot from headless necks and the stumps of legs and arms.

About a third of the way through the movie, Tarantino inserts a ten minute Japanimation cartoon relating Lucy Liu’s violent history paired with a soundtrack of Tarantino’s own blend of ’70s funk and Spanish mariachi music.

This film is only half the story. Kill Bill Vol. 2 comes out February 2004. This means that the ending is a cliffhanger, but not a very good one. You want to see the movie’s conclusion because you have already invested two hours of your life in Tarantino’s visual romp.

Tarantino needed to make up his mind about whether he was making a comedy, action or drama. The violence isn’t believable, but still too dark to warrant laughing at without guilt.

All said, the film is simply too strange to hold any mass appeal, but I am reserving the final critique until Vol. 2. Tarantino always has a way of surprising his viewers in the end.