Pulp Fiction (1994)

***The cream of the crop of quirky crime thrillers***
RELEASED IN 1994 and written & directed by Quentin Tarantino, "Pulp Fiction" is a drama/thriller/black comedy about two hit men in Los Angeles (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson), their mob boss & his wife (Ving Rhames and Uma Thurman) and a champion boxer who incurs the wrath of the boss (Bruce Willis).
The lurid, droll tale is told in a non-linear fashion, but it's easy to follow and the final act ties everything up nicely. The dialogue's witty and the story maintains your attention, despite its 2 hour and 34 minutes runtime. The film's stylish and pulsates with energy and innovation; it understandably influenced many 90's films and beyond.
I put off seeing this iconic picture until almost twenty years after its release because the protagonists are all big city gangsters or somehow involved with 'em. These are lawless people who would kill a person without batting an eye. Their god is money or hedonism. Let ’em shoot each other to smithereens for all I care. But if you can look beyond this and the constant profanities, the film's worth your time. What redeems it for me, besides the all-around entertaining movie-making, is that it's a tale of redemption and the high price of stubborn folly: The wise person recognizes God’s grace and responds accordingly while the fool doesn’t and blithely goes on his (doomed) way. Once a person receives grace they naturally extend it to others. There are additional gems spiced throughout.
Both Travolta and Jackson shine here. There are several other celebrities on hand, like Harvey Keitel, with many in cameos, e.g. Christopher Walken; not to mention several formidable females, like curvy Julia Sweeney (Raquel), cutie Maria de Medeiros (Fabienne), Angela Jones (Esmarelda) and voluptuous Susan Griffiths (Marilyn Monroe).
BOTTOM LINE: If you're in the mood for a quirky crime drama/thriller you can't go wrong with "Pulp Fiction." It's top-of-the-line in every way, including the subtext.
THE FILM WAS SHOT in the Greater Los Angeles area. ADDITIONAL WRITER: Roger Avary.
GRADE: A

**One of the unavoidable movies to know Tarantino… but I think it's not as incredible as it is sometimes said to be.**
This was one of the films that consolidated Tarantino's career and made him one of the "superstar" directors who, whenever he releases a film, whether good or bad, attracts a legion to the cinema. I was never a fan of his, and I don't think I will be. He made some films that I liked and others that I hated. I wouldn't call it regular, a “safe bet”, but we can't deny it, it's original, true to his style and doesn't seem concerned about pleasing anyone.
The film follows more than one plot: we have a couple of violent bandits who try to rob a cafeteria, we have a boxer at the end of his career who has to flee after winning a fight he had agreed he would lose, we have a couple of murderers in the pay of a mobster who are tasked with recovering a stolen suitcase, and we also have the capricious girlfriend of that same mobster, whose boredom forces her darling to assign one of his assassins to babysit for her. What unites them all? In addition to the fact that they naturally intersect, they are all part of the same violent, brutal and marginal universe.
For many, this film is one of the best of the 90's. I would never consider it as such, that is, for me, an exaggeration. It's reasonably good, it's gained cult status, it has fans, but it's not a masterpiece, not for me. It's not a boring film, it doesn't tire us out and the various sub-plots are intertwined very well, with skill and elegance. There's a lot of violence, heavy slang and drugs, and that can be really hard at times, I felt that too. However, this heavier language, drugs and violence end up being a natural part of the underworld of crime and marginality where the characters move, so it's something we can count on right from the start. And there are no sympathetic characters who can arouse some empathy, so it doesn't matter to us whether they live or die in the most unpleasant ways (and some of them suffer a lot).
These are all qualities, and will be even more valued by those who are more familiar with the “pulp” literary subgenre. I'm not, it's not part of my culture, and I even had to go look it up on the Internet to understand what it was, and what its characteristics were. Despite that, there are a few things about this film that I really didn't like or felt over the top. One of them is the dialogues. There are scenes with a lot of dialogues, dialogues without any interest, which can dwell on boring topics, just because. One of them, right at the beginning of the film, is about foot massages, just to give a small example. There are many scenes that seem overly drawn out due to these endless dialogues. I also think the film has too many images of bare feet. Tarantino gained fame as a fetishist, but he always said he wasn't… watching this film makes it hard to believe him. And one of the characters, who is a murderer, makes a very long quote from the Bible… it's the kind of “literature” that I think an underworld murderer probably wouldn't know by heart.
The actors are very good, we have several notable names: John Travolta is excellent in the role he was given, with that black suit and his hair soaked in oil. Samuel L. Jackson is not far behind, and Uma Thurman is fantastic. I would say that, at least, Thurman and Travolta achieve performances at the best level of their respective careers in this film. Bruce Willis isn't bad, but he's just not that interesting. I enjoyed seeing my countrywoman Maria de Medeiros in her only major international role, I'm sorry she couldn't go further, but that's life. Tarantino also appears in the film, and it would have been much better if he hadn't. He's a ham as an actor.
Technically, the film has many qualities, starting with the excellent cinematography, with vivid colors and good lighting. There are excellent action scenes, for all tastes, and the soundtrack makes good use of several musical themes that we know very well.