... when Quentin was king

Rating: 7/10 (17 May 2000)

Despite the inevitable backlash against Tarantino, and regardless of whether you approve of his violence/bad language/self-referencing narratives, I firmly believe the cinema owes him a huge debt.
For I genuinely believe that the 1980s were the worst decade in history for the modern motion picture. The "high concept pitching" of films that could be summed up literally in two lines, with functional dialogue and A to B plotting had caused a serious slump in creative output, and audiences were being patronised by what substandard fare was being pumped into the cinemas.
In 1992 Quentin entered the scene with Reservoir Dogs (9). Okay, it's heavily indebted to foreign film, but the real-time/time-bending conceits of the movie, coupled with naturalistic dialogue that gave characterisation broke down the rot. Okay, films with plot and character were all the rage in the 60s, 70s, 50s even. But the 80s had forgotten how to do it, and Quentin gave it back to us. Now I'm sure everyone could tell me there's another film writer-director that did it first, but Quentin was the one to popularise it. He capitalised on Dogs with the more commercial, more indulgent, more juvenile, but ultimately much more fun Pulp Fiction (10). Without these films we would never have seen such fare as The Usual Suspects, with it's wordy script and time-bending, and this would never have bled on to the dying British film scene with movies like the successful Trainspotting. There were other successes, too, such as by far and away the greatest Tarantino film not directed by Tarantino, True Romance (7). Starring Christian Slater (who allegedly gives 10% in royalties to Jack Nicholson for every performance), it lost the downbeat ending and time distortions, but Quentin was said to be satisfied with the linear narrative of this 93 movie. His first real film script (discounting an incomplete student project, "My Best Friend's Birthday"), it was completed in 1987 and went for years before being taken up. It showcased some of his best dialogue and Hollywood satire; Tony Scott's more laid-back direction actually giving greater chance for the writing to shine. And for a film that also features Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman and Balki out of Perfect Strangers, it didn't feel crammed. Amazingly, I still know of people that won't see it as they think by the title that it's a romantic comedy.
However, the nature of the films and the fact that Tarantino did so much in so little time meant a backlash wasn't only inevitable, but in certain quarters, eagerly awaited. Experimental, between-film follies such as Four Rooms didn't help, and when Jackie Brown emerged, three years after Pulp Fiction, it seemed as if his time had passed. Jackie Brown (7) was a smoother, maturer direction for Tarantino. The first of his films not to come from his own ideas, but from a source text, Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, it was a new direction. Interestingly, aged 15 Quentin had been caught trying to unsuccessfully hustle a copy of Leonard's "The Switch" from a shopping mall. Many of his previous films did use the oft touted "magpie technique" of borrowing. Ringo Lam's City of Fire has often been brought up in conversation against Reservoir Dogs and the "Butch" segment of Pulp Fiction was a reworked version of Roger (Killing Zoe) Avary's "Pandemonium Reigned". Yet this was a fully-fledged adaptation, Miramax having bought him the rights to four Leonard novels in 1995. (The other three being Killshot, Bandits and Freaky Deaky. Quentin's original plan was to make Killshot, starring himself, Bruce Willis and Holly Hunter).
Of course, many don't appreciate a film that has in it's range Robert DeNiro, yet underuses him, and Samuel L. Jackson, who is given plenty to say, but nothing as incendiary as Ezekiel 25:17. There is only one time-break, where a single scene is played out three times in the same bracket, and only one kitsch moment, where an animated plane is used to paper the gaps in a $5 million-higher-than-Pulp-Fiction-but-still-very-low $13 million budget. Violence is almost non-existent by Q's standards, and the subjects discussed range not from burger bars to the Fantastic Four but the fear of ageing and the Delphonics. Top of the bill is a long-term idol of Quentin's, Pam Grier, who is even name-checked in Reservoir Dogs. It's an altogether more relaxed, more controlled film, and in many ways the writing is stronger. The easy option of a sketch-style format for his script is discarded, making it, in a sense, a better film. Yet people claim it to be worse. Strange. A genuinely touching romance at times, the only comment this one got was "it's nothing compared to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction". Quentin, it seems, is a victim of his own success.
And so it is that we now await his fourth writer/director vehicle, another Leonard piece, "40 Lashes". Fingers are crossed that it will a superb return to form, though maybe it doesn't really matter. Even if Quentin's time were over, he would still have achieved a wide-scale revitalisation of American cinema. However, it would be fortunate if 40 Lashes did live up to its promise, if only to put the ghosts of Tarantino failures to rest. But that's another story. The time