A black masterpiece of postmodern pastiche

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2003)

Brilliant. The film contains typical Quentin Tarantino hallmarks of black humour, ultraviolence, improbable story narrated and populated by over the top, absurd, flawed (and ultimately totally human) characters, and unforgetable action sequences.
What really impressed me was the detail. The film is bricolage writ large. Postmodern pastiche. Tarantino is a brilliant postmodern semiotic architect. Deconstructing is the wrong word here, though it's always used incorrectly in this context; disassembling is better. Tarantino excels at disassembling low culture film and media - from Star Trek to McDonalds, film noir to Anime, from Hong Kong Action/ vintage kung-fu to kitsch pop music - painstakingly dissecting each into it's most elementary form, and then reassembling these symbols with new coherence and meaning into his own film. Each element, form, or style he lifts from B movie culture becomes an isolated symbol removed from it's original context. Moving it into a new context, it retains some, all, or none of it's original meaning, gains new context dependent meaning, and becomes part of a new gestalt - that of the Quentin Tarantino film. Tarantino's comprehensive understanding of his low culture source material and the mechanics of his narrative allow him to populate his film with excessive richness but with total economy and consistency. What you get is a Disney World effect - thrilling, stimulating, richly detailed, and at times disorienting - but fabulously entertaining. Academically and personally I enjoy and appreciate this type of work - which makes this one of if not the best film I've seen in the last 3 years. But I don't expect most to agree with me.
Can't wait for the second one, can't wait to see this one again.