You don't know the facts; just the fiction

Rating: 10/10 (9 January 2014)

"Pulp Fiction" is a movie about blood, guts, violence, strange sex, drugs, fixed fights, dead body disposal, leather freaks, and a wristwatch that makes a dark journey down through the generations.
Pulp Fiction" is constructed in such a nonlinear way that you could see it a dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next. It doubles back on itself, telling several interlocking stories about characters who inhabit a world of crime and intrigue, triple-crosses and loud desperation. The title is perfect.
It is one of the most influential film of the decade; its circular timeline can be sensed in films as different as "The Usual Suspects,'' "Zero Effect'' and "Memento,'' not that they copied it, but that they were aware of the pleasures of toying with chronology.
But it isn't the structure that makes "Pulp Fiction'' a great film. Its greatness comes from its marriage of vividly original characters with a series of vivid and half-fanciful events and from the dialogue. The dialogue is the foundation of everything else.
If the situations are inventive and original, so is the dialogue. The people in "Pulp Fiction" are in love with words for their own sake. The dialogue by Tarantino and Avary is off the wall sometimes, but that's the fun. It also means that the characters don't all sound the same: Travolta is laconic, Jackson is exact, Plummer and Roth are dopey lovey-doveys, Keitel uses the shorthand of the busy professional, Thurman learned how to be a moll by studying soap operas.
While watching this movie, I realize that all of the dialogue is entirely devoted to explaining or furthering the plot, and no joy is taken in the style of language and idiom for its own sake. The characters in "Pulp Fiction'' are always talking, and always interesting, funny, scary or audacious. This movie would work as an audio book.