Year: 1994
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Country: US
Language: English
" What ain't no country I've ever heard of. They speak English in What?"
The well known American Director Quentin Tarantino is a rather polarizing character. He is either loved or hated by individual critics and film-goers. Great debates spark from his pictures, which contain homage over homage of Classic Westerns and film noir. Frankly, I think he has become a fraction of what he once was. In making films like Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained for a big production company, he has sold his artistic soul. Still Tarantino was great at some point, his best work was of course Pulp Fiction.
In this movie Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackdon) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) are two hitmen who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace. (Ving Rhames) Wallace has also asked Vincent to take his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is an aging boxer who is paid by Wallace to lose his next fight. The lives of these seemingly unrelated people are woven together comprising of a series of funny, bizarre and uncalled-for incidents.
In many people's eyes, even the ones who have lost faith in Tarantino, Pulp Fiction is Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece. It's a bad-ass film with a non linear plot that takes us through the gritty underworld of Hitmen and Gangsters. Tarantino takes stories that have been told over and over, such as the boxer who is paid to take a dive, and re-invents them with his own unique style. In this film, blending classic Hollywood Cinema with the modern era of Cinema works quite well.
The dialogue in Pulp Fiction is crisp and believable, it's enjoyable to listen to somewhat complicated characters talk about things completely unrelated to the plot, such as ordering food in France. Tarantino loads the movie with great humor, mostly built by incredible tension and anxiety, such as the scene where Mia overdoses. The Director gives us incredible shots with his camera, there are at least a dozen moments of great cinematography in Pulp Fiction. The score is unforgettable; right from the start we hear a tune that becomes etched in our minds. However, the film is not perfect; like most Tarantino films Pulp Fiction is very entertaining, but has no thought provoking themes or messages. What is the point of this film? What is Tarantino trying to teach us? It's use of violence is careless. Tarantino has never been the type of director to use violence in an intelligent way, but rather to glorify how cool it is.
In conclusion, though Quentin Taratino's Pulp Fiction is hailed as a masterpiece by many people, I would have to disagree. It's a bit too superficial and full of shock violence, the gun store rape scene for example, to be considered that. While it is incredibly entertaining and very technically well made, it lacks the depth that a typical "masterpiece" needs. This film did inspire many American movies to be made, and I thank it for that, but it's contribution to World Cinema as a whole is not so big. 3.5/5
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