Pulp Fiction | Film Review

FILM MOVIE REVIEW

Pulp Fiction ***

by Ed Gonzalez on August 13, 2002 Jump to Comments (0) or Add Your Own

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Quentin Tarantino's second feature, Pulp Fiction, is at once ridiculously entertaining and remarkably weightless. Its quintessential scene takes place outside the Jack Rabbit Slim's restaurant when Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) tells Vincent Vega (John Travolta) not to be a "square." Forget the irony (after a 10-year acting rut that included three Look Who's Talking films, Pulp Fiction's success made Travolta reputable again), Mia's line could be the film's mantra. Tarantino giddily incorporates countless texts (Kiss Me Deadly, Saturday Night Fever, and so on) into this farcical noir Frankenstein that, not unlike Shelly's legendary monster, eventually turns on itself. More important than the film's elegant structure is what the creation represents: Jonathan Rosenbaum summed Pulp Fiction up quite nicely as "a couch potato's paradise"; no one here can access reality unless they are summoning the many ghosts of noir's past. (Tarantino's most fascinating creation, Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Winnfield is more than a repository of disposable trivia and smart-alecky responses, embodying the film's surface concern with righteousness and redemption.) Godard and countless others did this kind of thing way before Tarantino, but Pulp Fiction had such a profound effect on older Gen Xers because it spoke to a newer generation's shared consciousness, which includes an infatuation with movies and, apparently, a fear of penetration. (What is the film's infamous rape sequence but a projection of Tarantino and his heterosexual, largely white male fanbase's deepest fears and prejudices?) When the Wolf (Harvey Keitel) makes Vincent and Jules change clothes, Jimmie (Tarantino) calls them dorks for wearing lame sports T-shirts. By pointing out the articles belong to Jimmie, Tarantino acknowledges his own dorkdom. In turn, it makes him "cool" (not enough though to permit his liberal use of the word "nigger") and a hero to his media-savvy generation. In the end, it's not that Tarantino has no life, it's that his life is the movies. Much like his characters, the director can only live by engaging cinema.

Director(s): Quentin Tarantino
Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Frank Whaley, Ving Rhames, Rosanna Arquette, Eric Stoltz, Christopher Walken, Maria de Medeiros, Peter Greene, Harvey Keitel, Julia Sweeney, Quentin Tarantino
Distributor: Miramax Films
Runtime: 154 min.
Rating: R
Year: 1994