Seemingly about nothing, yet strangely engrossing.

Rating: 8/10 (18 September 2014)

Pulp Fiction is often hailed as one of the best movies ever to be made. It's constantly praised for it's masterful script, and in my opinion deserves to be so. But the film often feels as though it isn't actually about anything. Some scenes feature dialogue that appears entirely random and never comes back into play. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if Tarantino just wrote about whatever he wanted to. Despite all this, however, the movie is cohesive and surprisingly gripping.
On top of that it's decidedly realistic: while the characters go through strange things and they aren't exactly your average Joes (afterall, two of them are assassins and another is a boxer on the run from a mob boss), the situations and reactions could happen in the real world. Once you accept that Vincent is an assassin for the mob, it's very plausible that he'd talk about foreign McDonald's with his partner, shoot up some dudes and then have to save his boss' wife from a heroin overdose. So while the conversations may seem unrelated to anything, they actually cement each character in the world that Tarantino has created and help them feel real.
The acting is also great across the board. My favourite has to be Samuel L Jackson as Jules. The guy knows how to embody the character that Tarantino envisioned, but simultaneously makes every line of scripted dialogue feel like ad-lib. Jules acts and sounds like a real person, in what is a perfect blend of script and actor. The other actors do a great job too, even if they only appear for one scene. Christopher Walken played it serious in a scene where the dialogue took a turn for the silly (discussing hiding a watch up his ass). I also loved Harvey Kietel as Mr.Wolf, the man who fixes things. His scene was one of the highlights of the movie, and it was largely due to his expert delivery.
Overall, Pulp Fiction is a movie driven by its witty and unique script. You may struggle to find a message hidden within it, but I believe that there is one there (Jules' monologue at the end presents the fact that he has made a clear moral choice of not to kill, and Butch shows heroism when given the chance to simply escape.) In the end, though, it's not about that. It's simply about enjoying the gripping characters and crazy events that Tarantino has dreamt up. 9/10