Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a 2003 American martial arts film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Uma Thurman as the Bride, who swears revenge on a team of assassins (Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Vivica A. Fox) and their leader, Bill (David Carradine), after they try to kill her. Her journey takes her to Tokyo, where she battles the yakuza.
Tarantino conceived Kill Bill as an homage to the 1973 film Lady Snowblood, grindhouse cinema, martial arts films, samurai cinema, blaxploitation and spaghetti Westerns. It features an anime sequence by Production I.G. Volume 1 is the first of two Kill Bill films made in a single production. They were planned as a single release, which Tarantino split into two films to avoid having to cut scenes. Volume 2 was released six months later.
Kill Bill was theatrically released in the United States on October 10, 2003. It received positive reviews and grossed over $180 million worldwide on a $30 million budget, achieving the highest-grossing opening weekend of a Tarantino film to that point.