Revolutionary 1990s cool

Rating: 10/10 (10 May 2006)

Watching Pulp Fiction for the first time is like discovering a new type of music that'll soon be sweeping every wannabe-cool DJ's airwaves. Watching it for a second time makes you realise just how formulaic and mundane all those seminars and handbooks about "How to write a Hollywood script" really are. I don't want to criticise the Robert McKee class of Scriptwriting, we all know that we need the occasional "Mission: Impossible" to tickle our funny bone rather than our minds, but you don't have to be a genius, or indeed a scriptwriter, to work out that Pulp Fiction really is a true work of art. A film that, despite all it's obvious inspirations, was such an original film, not least one of the most important of the 1990s, spawning all kinds of replicas, inspirations and wannabe filmmakers. The celebration of junk food, bad hair and kitsch cool could never be told with as much fizz or energy as in Tarantino's second coming.
In the film's opening we meet Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, deliberating in a diner about how no one ever sticks-up restaurants. "Bars, liquor stores, you'll get your head blown off stickin' up one of them!" Roth says, in his south London twang. He has a point too. They decide to rob the place they're in. If only they knew of the consequences. In fact, if only ALL the characters knew what they were doing. Pulp Fiction is an endless show of people f'ing things up. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson play a pair of 70s-hyperbole laden hit men. A similar set up to the previous scene has our protagonists talking about nothing in particular - burgers, pot, what they put on fries in Paris - then launching into a violent tirade among their now pursued yuppie friends, who obviously owe money to the two hit men's boss. It is a shocking switch of tone, one that works seamlessly, and sums up how well Tarantino and Avary can write. It also shows how violence is simply a way of life for these men. And with all this in mind, authenticity is still right at the back of your mind; Pulp Fiction is a movie about old movies, not real life. Everything from the blazing soundtrack to Jackson's hideously groovy afro to the incredibly simple story lines - a boxer throws a fight, but must get his father's watch back before the gangsters find it, a body must be dumped before the wife gets home, a woman OD's and must be resuscitated before the her husband (the boss) finds out - is a one huge jollification of everything trashy but cool.
And what of the now infamous cast that Tarantino so delicately hired to work his script? John Travolta has had so many revivals in his fluctuating career, but this role showed us such a new spin on the Travolta ball. He is great as the stoner hit-man, who gets himself in deep waters with the boss' woman, played by an equally impressive Uma Thurman, who nails the moll wife exquisitely - complete with 20s style hair and an irresistible underlying seduction. We all know what Bruce Willis is capable of when he puts his acting chops to the test, and able assistance is given by the likes Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken (in one the movies' funniest scenes) and Tim Roth. But it is Samuel L. Jackson who walks away as the new star in Hollywood. With His explosive and dynamic turn as the fast talking, god-fearing partner-in-crime of Vincent Vega, Jules, he delivers most of the movie's many memorable lines, and epitomises the effortlessness of Tarantino cool: He is bold, funny, explicit and explosive. His lack of Oscar at that years' ceremony should have been filed under the human rights act.
A comic book of comedy with enough one-liners to keep the QT devotees annoyingly quoting until it may just seem a bit too good to be true, Pulp Fiction, even now - with all the time we've had to wrap it up and endure it's obvious imitators - still seems fresh. A film like no other, despite it's obvious homages to Godard, film-noir and blaxploitation. It's pretty easy to dismiss his work as violent trash, but yet look at the recipients of all the bad deeds in the film: the ones who "see the light" as it were are the ones who succeed, the ones who continue to fall foul to the bad ways of life are the ones who pay for it in the end (one such unlucky character ends up in a rather unenviable position between a redneck rapist and his gun toting partner). In the end, it is a very simple collection of stories about redemption, about people who get themselves in horrible, yet hilarious, situations and have to arduously dig themselves out. Its legacy is indisputable. Its value is priceless. You haven't seen anything until you see Pulp Fiction.