A mixed bag

Rating: 7/10 (18 May 2006)

A bunch of thugs, druggies, and other assorted low-lifes managed to keep my attention for most of this movie due to some sharp dialog, clever time sequencing, great acting, and a high-energy tension filled script. Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) make a great pair of hit men philosophizing and quoting scripture as they go about their brutal business.
Having said that, there are significant negatives. The tone is generally that of stylized movie-making fun that is not to be taken seriously. We have, for example, contrived dialog, Mia's (Uma Thurman) making gestures indicating a square that is outlined in white on the screen, references to other movies like the glowing briefcase a la "Repo Man," Jack Rabbit Slim's 50s retro bar where Thurman and Travolta do a captivating twist, and so forth. But the violent scenes are disturbingly realistic and Mia's drug overdose is truly vile. I felt whip-lashed by the uneven tone. While most of the dialog is ingenious and engaging, on occasion it falls flat. I am sure that the scene where Butch's (Bruce Willis) girlfriend goes on for five minutes describing what she wants for breakfast is meant to be preciously humorous, but it had me looking at my watch. Then, for such a fast-paced movie, there are inexplicable dead zones like when Butch goes to retrieve his watch from his apartment and for several minutes we watch him park his car and walk through fences and fields before getting there. We know his destination, just jump to the apartment scene please. And would Vincent not hear Butch enter the apartment and would he not take his gun with him to the bathroom?
In fact I found the Butch character uninteresting and unnecessary and the movie would have been better if he had been written out. This would have shortened the overly-long run time of 154 minutes to something more reasonable and we would have been spared the over-the-top scene with Zed, Maynard, and The Gimp as well as the homosexual rape. Perhaps the latter was an homage, in questionable taste, to "Deliverance." But this movie is not worried about taste. However, without Butch we might have been deprived of the hilarious scene with Christopher Walken, but for all of its significance that scene could have been tossed in almost anywhere.
In summary I think this is an undisciplined, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, original work of art. It employs a bit of a shotgun approach with more scenes hitting their targets than not.