PULP FICTION **** OF **** grade is A+
When critics offer their favorite or best film choices they usually serve Citizen Kane or Casablanca, two great films. I'll throw Pulp Fiction and I'll do so for the same reason they pick theirs. They venture beyond any conventional idea of what a modern movie can be and what it can accomplish. They end up transcending film and making it their own, creating waves of wannabes, none of which can even compare. I love Pulp Fiction. It is the film that made me love films more than I thought was possible. I can't imagine seeing a better film.
Pulp Fiction tells three stories of bad people and like Kane it is nonlinear, making even the simplest story seem somewhat confusing. The first story is about a hitman taking his bosses wife out to diner, the second about a boxer who fails to fall even though he was paid to, and the third story has an accidental killing leaving a dead body to be disposed of. All the stories are told with height of humor and outrageous flare for filmmaking. It also has the best dialogue I have ever heard, crackling with profanity and explodes with joy of language. The only writer whose dialogue I could compare Pulp Fiction to is David Mamet, and that is a big credit to Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery (they won Best Original Screenplay).
The film is also famous for reviving and creating careers. John Travolta had no career, other than Look Who's Talking 4, and was brought back to the Hollywood lime light by his appearance in this film. Sam Jackson and Uma Thurman had small careers that were catapulted into stars by Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino was made into a household name by the success of this film.
Pulp Fiction is an energetic and amazingly exciting film. It teases us with passages of humor and then explodes with deftly timed flashes of extreme violence, and plays with our anticipation. Tarantino knows where we will expect to see violence and blood and he wonderfully prolongs the dialogue passages before them to make the violence (which isn't as graphic as everyone thinks) seem more excessive and shocking. Take the scene where hitmen will kill a few kids that ripped of their boss, we get a long, funny discussion of foot massages before they enter the apartment and more conversation about fast food after.
There is also endless speculation about Pulp Fiction. There is a briefcase that contains something "beautiful" that emits a yellow glow, but we never find out what it is. Is there something biblical in the case? Jules (Sam Jackson) keep referencing a bible quote, and Marsellus Wallace (Rhames as the boss) has a Band-Aid on the back of his head. Is that covering the forbidden 666? Why do Jules and Vincent (Travolta) have their lives saved? All these speculations are fun but unanswerable. The point is Pulp Fiction is the most talked about film in several years.
I love every scene in Pulp Fiction. There isn't a line I would word differently or a camera shot I would edit out. Each actor delivers a wonderful, well-measured performance without going over the top. This is the kind of film that begs for you to ask what the favorite scene, or character, or story is. A film that energizes you to the point where you feel you must talk about it, for the sake of having it linger on in your head.
The only way to see Pulp Fiction is on the big screen. Most people have only seen it on their televisions and that is a shame. If you must watch it on TV please see t on wide screen video and not pan and scan. Also please avoid the network broadcast of Pulp Fiction, it has a TVMA rating and is director approved but is horribly edited and absent of content. Like reading Shakespeare modernized and robbed of its poetic attributes.
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