PULP FICTION
[Spoilers]
A film review by Jules N. Binoculas
Copyright 1994 Jules N. Binoculas
No doubt many will say that PULP FICTION is one of the year's greatest films--how many will say it's one of cinematic history's most offensive? How many have the guts?
It's not offensive because the word "nigger" must have been used 69 times (and that was by the African-Americans in the film), nor is it offensive because Bruce Willis empties a round of automatic weapon fire into a bloody John Travolta as Travolta exits a bathroom with his defecatory reading material.
Nor is it offensive because Uma Thurman snorts heroin by mistake and is dragged (nose bloody and white scum pouring from her mouth) onto the floor of a house of low-voltage substance abusers to have Travolta ram a 6-inch syringe through her breast to snap her out of a coma with prescription adrenaline.
Nor is it offense because a bald, fat, chocolate parody of a Blaxploitation crime godfather is draped over a gymnast's padded exercise horse with a red rubber ball stuffed into his mouth and raped anally by a Southern-accented security guard. Nor is offensive because the film's director himself appears in an extended cameo to remind his two lead actors that his house is "not a dead nigger storage" facility.
Don't get the wrong idea; these are the film's strengths!
When 19th Century British iconoclast and literary prankster, Oscar Wilde was testifying in his own defense for writing offensive literature--he was asked, "Mr. Wilde, do you feel that work was immoral?," he answered, "It was worse than that. It was badly written."
PULP FICTION is not offensive because it tries to be cute. It's offensive because it's a ponderously soulless sophomorically bloody film-school abortion, masquerading as a parody of cliche of a postmodernist cartoon. Call it what you will, but call it "baaad!"
It's probably good manners for your humble reviwer to summarize the plot of this warped and anaemic ego-trip:
A black hitman and a white hitman murder three Causcasian burger-eating adolescents living in a cheesy la-apartment (one of whom bears a frightening resemblance to an uncredited Jerry Seinfeld (believe it or not).
They take a black hostage because the black assassin feels that, although they were shot at close range by the Seinfeld-look-alike, the bullets miraculously only put holes in the wall behind them because God intervened to save their candy a*ses.
However, what God gives, he quickly takes away: Travolta, the white hitman, shoots the black hostage in the face from the front seat of their getaway car when the black hitman hits a bump in the road.
Next, they visit Quentin Tarantino, playing a Caucasian suburban Southern California husband married to an African-American nurse who's due home any minute, and would be deeply offended to see a "dead nigger stored in the garage."
To make a 2-hour-and-44-minute story shorter:
Harvey Keitel shows up in black tie and tuxedo to order the hitmen to put the corpse in the trunk, and clean the car to remove blood and "small pieces of brain and skull" with household disinfectants.
During all the unfolding excitement, the white hitman finds time to take his (black) boss's white wife out dancing in a 50's retro drive-in juke joint before she overdoses but survives after heroic medical instructions from Travolta's neurotic (white) drug dealer.
After that, Bruce Willis, playing a white boxer who kills his opponent and tries to leave town before slicing a greasy pawn-shop owner with his own samarai sword while rescuing the same (black) boss from passive sodomy by a sado-masochistic racist looking for some forcible homosexual amusement in the back room.
There's probably another subplot, but you get the idea.
Here's the big secret: QT is way over his head! The film is an (amazingly) sometimes humorous non-stop rip-off of every 20th Century media cliche imaginable--complete with no context, no soul, no pacing, no proportion, and no ideas!
Be sure to see it--if you want to encourage independent filmmakers to continue their anal-ysis of modern culture!
Rating: **** (4 assholes)
(Making this film was obviously a ploy to drive up the price of silver used in all the release prints/)
Final recommendation: Hand over your $ and enjoy making others rich!
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