Uma's making a killing

The most hotly anticipated film of the year is about to burst onto our cinema screens.

Kill Bill is the first film from Quentin Tarantino since 1997's Jackie Brown and Hollywood's ultimate maverick director is under huge pressure to score a palpable hit.

Now the first reviews are in - and they are raves.

According to Total Film, which gives it five out of five, Kill Bill is "quite brilliant".

"It's...very much a Tarantino masterpiece, QT's fingerprints being smeared over every inch of this beautiful baby...so good it deserves mention in the same breath as Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction."

More plaudits come from Empire Magazine, which gives it four out of five and also praised its "sly visual wit".

The review, published in next month's issue, also praises Uma Thurman's performance and urges filmlovers to "just sit back and enjoy the splatter".

It goes on: "A worthy addition to QT's canon and one of the most thrilling movies of 2003."

However, Empire does question Tarantino's writing and a decision to split the film into two parts (part two follows next year), saying: "The real question is does it stand alone? To which the answer is - just about. But only Volume 2 will determine if Bill has a heart to go along with all the guts."

Although the movies boast a cast including Thurman, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah, the real reason movie-lovers are clamouring to see this film is Tarantino.

The film follows a bloody path of vengeance taken by The Bride (Thurman), an assassin who awakes from a five-year coma with a bullet lodged in her skull. She sets out to track down her former boss, Bill, who ordered a massacre at her wedding after she tried to quit crime.

According to co-star Liu, who plays Japanese gang mastermind O-Ren Ishii, some of the violence in Kill Bill is so extreme, audiences may be physically sick - hardly a glowing reference.

And Thurman adds to the queasiness when she says of her character: "I get shot in the head, raped, kicked, beaten and sliced by samurai swords - they should have called it Kill Uma."

Tarantino is one of Hollywood's best-known and revered directors but Kill Bill is only his fourth film and after a six-year absence some have questioned whether he could repeat the success of his first three films.

As well as a long sabbatical for Tarantino, the absence was for one other unavoidable delay - a break in production while his star and muse Thurman had her second child.