"Nothing comes between me and my AK !"

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2005)

"AK-47: when you absolutely, positively gotta kill every mutha**ckah in the room- accept no substitutes!" Hearing the distinct pitch to Samuel L. Jackson's voice with that as one of the first and most memorable lines got me hooked into this film. However, it isn't the standard Tarantino-istic roller-coaster ride filled with ultra-bloody, sexist (to some degree like 'Reservoir Dogs'), and hip elements as his previous "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs" had. This one feels different as if one of his buddies directed this instead and he took all the credit (which wouldn't surprise me either). For one thing, it is very slow-paced in storytelling in seventies traditional style. Even the title in the opening sequence has a Roger Corman-feel to it, but the film never seems to get over second gear. The acting and dialogue are commendable, and because of that, we seem to watch and empathize with fleshed-out, human characters. Each character seems to inhibit their own syntex (way and manner of speaking) from Jackie to Ordell, Louis to Melanie, Max and Winston, etc.
I was so excited to see this film in late 1997 (but of course, my date wanted to see "Titanic" instead), but then heard a few weeks later that it wasn't really that good. So I missed it in the theaters and saw it on anti-climactic video, but I'm glad I did. The film seems to be overpraised at times-- being that it was a fair film, but it wasn't all that good! Now that QT's delivered us with crap like "Kill Bill 1&2" (highly overrated to the point being where it's unsettling that your 60-year-old mother-in-law likes it and you don't), this movie seems to mystify me. Like the moments before the storm. I caught it again on IFC last night and I watched about 2/3 of it, secretly I was hoping that there would be something that I missed that would fit nicely in the end. Didn't happen, though. But when Samuel was yelling at DeNiro for blasting Bridget Fonda, I was suddenly interested again. The heist was good, but once again, the pacing kept this film back from being any better.
I can honestly say that Q.T. has shown a different style of film-making in him which I never thought existed. There's finally some degree of maturity in him, where I thought he would be a forever Generation X hack that would only be capable of conjuring movies like "True Romance" or what have you. This was once marqueed as a late show on Saturday nights for a while after it's release once upon a time. I wouldn't stay up after midnight on a Saturday to watch this-- more appropriate to view on a Wednesday afternoon double-feature (like what they used to do back in the seventies).