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He has repeatedly said how much he loves old Japanese samurai dramas, Hong Kong and Beijing martial arts flicks, Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, '70s exploitation action movies and even those soft-core Russ Meyer flesh fests.
Such influences were evident in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, but with Kill Bill: Volume 1 they become the whole purpose of the film. Subtlety be damned.
Every sequence in Kill Bill screams at how clever Tarantino knows he's being.
The camera work is stunning especially in a dual set in a snowy Japanese garden.
The breathtaking fight choreography pushes wire work, stunt flips and swordplay to eye-popping extremes.
General audiences be damned. With Kill Bill, the film geek has made a movie for other film geeks, students of film and critics.
It will delight all those who admire the technician in Tarantino and infuriate all those who think they're seeing a conventional film. Forget about plot and characters -- this is about action.
Uma Thurman is The Bride, a former member of an elite group of female assassins known as the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. How clever, they're deadly divas and talk about vipers. The others turn against The Bride on her wedding day -- leaving her for dead.
Surprise. She survives and then sets out to kill each of her would-be murderers, plus the man known as Bill who runs the squad.
He's a disembodied voice (David Carradine) much like Bosley in Charlie's Angels.
Her quest becomes a kinetic, blood-drenched valentine to all that is unholy in Asian revenge flicks.
Limbs and heads get hacked off, blood spurts like geysers, faces get mashed to pulp and blades of all kinds slice and dice flesh in graphic detail.
It's all meant to be so funny, so clever, so witty, so cartoonish, as cinematic silliness meets cinematic sadism.
The yellow body suit Thurman wears is a homage to Bruce Lee from Game of Death and the army of samurai warriors she encounters and dispatches all wear Jet Li's famous mask and black garb.
A flashback to explain why Lucy Liu's character is a cold-blooded killer is a cartoon in the Japanese anime style and Thurman's battle with Vivica A. Fox is a spirited wink at '70s exploitation carnage.
Tarantino's use of music is brilliant.
It says as much as the dialogue, costumes and camera work and it shows how meticulous Tarantino is as a director.
Tarantino has accomplished what he set out to do. He's made a drive-in movie for a generation of movie-goers raised on shopping mall multiplexes.
With Kill Bill: Volume 1, Tarantino is preaching to the converted, but he's not likely to make too many new converts.
His fans are going to love Kill Bill as much as he so obviously does, but woe to those who wander in unprepared and unsuspecting.
In what is a marketing scheme as crass as it is blatant, the conclusion to Kill Bill will hit cinemas in February.
It's the studio, not The Bride, who's really making the killing.
From the cliffhanger sequence at the end of Volume 1, the sequel promises more action, more gore and more cleverness, which is essentially much, much more of the same thing.
(This film is rated R)