Tarentino's Shot

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2002)

Quentin Tarentino's encyclopedic passion for noir films as well as seventies' television action shows is so powerful that you get giddy watching it and you have the sense that if no real ground is being broken, then at least `Pulp Fiction' is a culmination of a host of ideas. Linking together three stories (created by Tarentino and Roger Avery but with Tarentino getting the screenwriting credit) in a structure that can only be considered arcane for a film, he pulls out all the stops, cramming in as many references as he can to the pop culture that fascinates and repulses him. And working with his cinematographer, Andrzej Sekula, he creates an ugly, dirty Los Angeles underworld, the color baked out of it by a hot oppressive sun, in which his sordid characters (portrayed, among others, by John Travolta, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, each unforgettable) attempt to find value in their lives while wading through all the random violence and mistrust their world offers. If there are excesses--and there are, plenty of them--Tarentino can be forgiven them this time because you get the feeling that this is his best shot and he has to make the most of it. He succeeds brilliantly.