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Director: Quentin Tarantino
Initial Release Country: United
States
Times Previously Seen: around nine or ten, at least (last
seen about five years ago)
(Relatively) Rapid-Fire Plot Synopsis
*For those who haven’t seen it, Pulp Fiction is told in
non-linear style, making summation a rather odd task. I will present it in the
only way that I can manage to keep it reasonably concise. However, I am aware
that events play out in the film in a different order. Bear with me…
Jules and Vincent complete their executions of the unfortunate rubes who tried to rip off Marsellus Wallace, the kingpin of Los Angeles.
Shortly after, in their car with their inside informant,
Marvin, Jules and Vincent debate whether their escape from certain death was an
act of the Almighty. In the midst of the discussion, Vincent accidentally
shoots and kills Marvin – the result of careless handling of his pistol. Jules
and Vincent then hurriedly get their car to a friend’s house, where they spend
the next hour or so in a race against he clock to clean their car and dispose
of the body. With the help of a professional “cleaner,” Winston Wolf (Harvey
Keitel) the men are able to dispatch the car and body, though not without a
fair amount of tension.
After the ordeal, Jules and Vincent have some breakfast at a
diner. They continue their discussion of their avoidance of death earlier, and
Jules decides that he is going to give up his life as a hit man and become a
wanderer who rights wrongs. Vincent is highly skeptical and all but mocks his
colleague. While Vincent is in the restroom, a pair of boyfriend/girlfriend
thieves rob the diner. When the man attempts to rob Jules of Marsellus
Wallace’s briefcase, Jules turns the tables and pulls his gun on the robber.
After several minutes of tense discussion, Jules explains that he has given up
killing people, pays off the robber, and lets him and his girlfriend go, all of
this to the great chagrin of Vincent.
A day or two after, Vincent has an assignment to be a guard
and companion to Marsellus Wallace’s wife, Mia (Uma Thurman). Vincent takes Mia
to a retro restaurant, where the two engage in stimulating discussion and even
win a dance contest.
The unlikely dancing duo of hit man Vincent and mob wife Mia. This joyous routine will soon be followed by a harrowing drug overdose that puts a serious damper on the evening.
Back at the Wallace residence, as Vincent struggles in the
bathroom over his growing attraction to Mia, she discovers a bag of heroin in
Vincent’s discarded coat pocket. Thinking it to be cocaine, she snorts it, goes
into immediate shock and collapses. Vincent discovers her and rushes her to the
house of his drug dealer, Lance (Eric Stoltz). Vince and Lance get through
their extreme panic and manage to revive Mia with an adrenaline shot directly
to her heart. After these harrowing events, Mia and Vincent amicably agree to
keep the entire affair a secret from Marsellus, and they go their separate ways
for the evening.
Several days later, a major boxing match takes place. Aging
but capable boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) shocks Marsellus Wallace by
actually winning a fight that the crime boss has bribed him to lose. Butch, in
a supremely risky double-cross, took the cash from Wallace, wagered all of it
on himself, and won big. The only thing that he needs to do is quietly flee
from the country the next morning. This simple plan is foiled, however, when Butch
learns that his girlfriend, Fabian, has left his most prized possession - an
heirloom watch that his forebears took unspeakable pains to pass down to him.
Butch must risk returning to his apartment to retrieve the watch.
Butch carefully returns to his apartment, which at first
seems to be empty. He grabs the watch, and then notices a silenced machine gun
sitting on the kitchen counter. In an odd turn of luck for Butch, the hit man
sent to stake out his apartment is in the bathroom at the exact moment Butch
has arrived. When the assassin emerges, it turns out to be Vincent Vega, whom
Butch quickly kills with his own weapon.
Butch prepared to take out Vincent, the man who would have killed him had the careless hit man not left his gun outside of the bathroom.
Upon fleeing his apartment in his car, Butch unfortunately
runs across Marsellus Wallace himself. Wallace chases Butch into a pawn shop
run by a redneck, Maynard. Maynard pulls a shotgun on them both, knocks them
out, and brings them to the basement where he and his perverted companion, Zed,
make clear that they will take sexual advantage of both men and kill them.
While Maynard and Zed have their way with Wallace, Butch quietly manages to
free himself. Rather than escaping and leaving his adversary Wallace to a
horrible fate, however, Butch decides to save him. After the rescue, Wallace
grants Butch a sort of amnesty, telling him to leave L.A.
My Reaction to the Film (Done after this most recent
viewing)
I think I could go another 50 years before watching this
film again, and I still could not see it with fresh eyes. That is how much of
an impact it had on me when I first saw it, and that’s how much impact it’s had
on countless films since its release.
Back in 1994, I was 19 years old when I saw Pulp Fiction for
the first time. I had no idea who the director was, but the movie blew me away.
I had never seen a film so funny, engaging, tense, entertaining, novel, and
just plain fun. There were so many different things to soak up that I went back
to the theater to watch it three more times, over the course of the next few
weeks. Any time I found a friend who hadn’t seen it, I would bring them
immediately. It quickly became a mainstay of the pop culture landscape, and
references to nearly everything in the film have abounded ever since.
Now that nearly 20 years have passed and Quentin Tarantino
has released several other movies, it’s become rather easy to deconstruct his work
and view it as overdone and perhaps a bit too heavy on style at times. Still,
this doesn’t take away from just how novel a blend it all was back in 1994, and
it still shows his style as a brilliant one that is, as the saying goes, “often
imitated, never duplicated.”
Of course, the dialogue is the most engaging part of
watching Pulp Fiction the first, third, or even tenth time you see it.
Basically every line shows a certain amount of wit or unexpected humor.
Tarantino’s hallmark of seasoning the dialogue with pop culture references was
put on full display in Pulp Fiction. He had done it to a degree in his previous
film, Reservoir Dogs, but not to this extreme. In the same way that details and
references make a good stand-up comedian funny, the running spoken interplay
between characters in Pulp Fiction is as entertaining as it gets. Virtually
every line from the film is quotable, and I was just like millions of others in
going back to the theater repeatedly in order to soak it all up and commit it
to memory.
Vincent and Jules in the diner. Arguably the best of the many great conversations in the film. Samuel L. Jackson's take on Jules's introspection earned him a well-deserved Oscar.
When describing a Tarantino film (especially the earlier
ones), fans will never have the word “cool” very far from their vocabulary. The
characters themselves are all great archetypes of “cool.” The stony-eyed hit
men, the mythically-powerful mob boss, the aging boxer with one last shot to
hit it big – these major characters were all drawn from countless noir and pulp
stories from the previous several decades. Tarantino cast them into modern
settings masterfully and made them fun to watch. Even all of the minor
characters – Pumpkin and Honeybunny, Lance the drug dealer, Maynard and Zed the
perverted rednecks, Winston Wolf, and all of the others have become almost
iconic, based on amazingly composed vignettes. Tarantino is obviously a lover
of what he terms “badasses,” and Pulp Fiction probably has the highest badass
factor of all of his movies.
Yet another element to the Tarantino film is the music.
Never before had I taken in a movie in which the music enhanced the atmosphere
so effectively. From the moment that Miserlou relentlessly kicks in during the
opening credits, the soundtrack deepens the mood with every song. Once again,
the word “cool” finds its way to the forefront.
Though I’ve seen this movie at least ten times, and I know
it basically by heart, one thing was more noticeable to me this time around. I
had never really taken in just how obviously “cinematic” it all is. Sure, there
is a certain amount of realism to some of the settings, and the actors’
deliveries of the dialogue are astoundingly naturalistic. Still, when you focus
on the costumes, the set designs, and the composition of the other elements,
it’s abundantly clear that the world of Pulp Fiction is just that – fiction.
From the eye-popping colors of Jack Rabbit Slims to the minimal yet memorable
suits of Jules and Vincent, and even the obviously phony backdrop in the cab
that Butch takes from the boxing arena, there are plenty of moments that remind
you that you are, indeed, watching a movie. Sure, there are really tense and
violent moments (something for which Tarantino has been recognized and criticized
for two decades now), but it is quite clear that these are, in many ways, comic
book characters. In film, this makes for pure cinema through a concoction that
very few directors can manage.
Butch peruses which weapon he will use to kill a couple of deranged hillbillies. This visceral scene is one of several almost cartoonish ones that show off Tarantino's skill with the nearly-lost art of visual storytelling.
I don’t know if Pulp Fiction will be as enjoyable thirty,
twenty, or even ten years from now, when the pop culture references lose their
sparkle and meaning and more and more filmmakers try to ape its magic. But no
critic can ever diminish the effect it had on the cinematic landscape. It’s
still a really fun movie to watch, and may be the quintessential “1990s
American” movie.
Some Final Thoughts on Tarantino:
As stated, I became a tremendous fan of Quentin Tarantino
after Pulp Fiction, and I still go to see every movie that he either directs or
for which he writes the screenplay. Here are my quick thoughts on each of his
major motion pictures:
Reservoir Dogs (1992): Outstanding crime flick, featuring
everything that a Tarantino fan could love. The sharp dialogue, intensity, and non-linear
storytelling are all tight, and the acting is absolutely top-notch.
True Romance (1993): Director Tony Scott took Tarantino’s
script and fashioned another great movie. It has one of my all-time favorite
movie scenes – in which Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken stare each other
down and engage in a captivating exchange.
Natural Born Killers (1994): Director Oliver Stone took
Tarantino’s basic story and some of his script and created an uneven mess.
Stone can never help himself from making grandiose statements, and he went way
over the top in this one, often drowning out the strengths of the
Tarantino-penned script.
From Dusk ‘Till Dawn (1996): Directed by Robert Rodriquez, a
great vampire movie that combines Tarantino’s strengths with crime writing and
vampire lore. Over-the-top fun that I still occasionally watch and enjoy.
Jackie Brown (1997): The sleeper Tarantino movie. It’s
actually my second favorite, behind Pulp Fiction. Adapting an Elmore Leonard
novel, Tarantino put together his most accessible movie, for those who are put
off by the graphic violence in most of his movies. I always recommend this one
to people who haven’t seen it.
Tarantino's most underrated film, in my view. Great direction and acting bring a cracking Elmore Leonard tale to life. If you dig crime movies, check it out.
Kill Bill, volumes 1 and 2 (2003, 2004): Tarantino’s homage
to kung-fu and spaghetti western movies. They work very well in some places,
and they’re quite a bit of fun; however, they became a bit tiresome by the end
of the second part. The movie gore hits new heights in these ones.
Grindhouse/Deathproof (2007): This is where my patience with
Tarantino started to wear thin. This is his most self-indulgent, tiresome film.
There is some great acting and decent verbal exchanges, but Tarantino was
clearly in love with his own dialogue just as much as the B-movie exploitation
horror films that he was channeling. Not a bad movie, but I’ll never watch it
again.
Inglorious Basterds (2009): Still overly enamored of his own
dialogue, Tarantino nonetheless made a solid World War II flick. It’s a
preposterous re-imagining of history, but still an entertaining watch. Could
have been edited down a bit, but I enjoy it. Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt help
with excellent performances.
Django Unchained (2012): Very much like the previous movie,
only set in the 1850s old West. Again, Tarantino falls back on his passion for
spaghetti Westerns, but does it with his own panache. Also a bit long, but
still a solid movie. Like “Basterds,” it’s worth watching just for Christoph Waltz.
As of now, I still consider myself a fan, but I now qualify
it a bit more. At this point, I would really like to see Tarantino get away
from the same wells that he’s drawn from for years now – exploitation, kung-fu,
and spaghetti western films. I understand that these are his strengths and
passions, but I think he’s a capable enough filmmaker to try something a bit
different. Although, with word coming out that there is a “Kill Bill, part 3”
in the works, I probably shouldn’t hold out much hope.
That’s a wrap. 96 shows down. 9 to go.
Coming Soon: Chunking Express (1994)
Please be sure to pick up all empties on the way out.
