Black humor shines in dialogue-heavy pastiche

Rating: 8/10 (2 August 2010)

A lot of people have heard about "Pulp Fiction", but what about it has made it so endlessly popular? The main attribute, I believe, is that there are few cinematic experiences like it. It is in the nether land between drama and comedy, and defies genre. Crime thriller? Not serious enough. Comedy? No, those are made solely for you to laugh. You want a comedy, get Steve Martin. After Travolta and Jackson exit that diner and the credits roll, you feel like you've seen something truly different. On top of the unique style, highly creative threads run non-chronologically through the movie, punctuated by irony. Examples? The diner thieves declare restaurants would be easy to rob, but are stopped dead by a religious hit man. A man has to take his boss's wife out, and if he so much touches her feet, he'll be killed. This turns to crisis when he almost kills her, which would be much worse. And finally, one hit-man admits that God intervened in his life and survives; the man who scoffed at this is killed. Those these stories may seem dry on paper, Tarantino peppers them with idiosyncratic moments: Gangsters dressed in t-shirts and bathing suits, a mysterious briefcase, and an escalating series of unfortunate events after returning from the bathroom. It's not perfect, however. The homosexual rape scene is in bad taste and does not have the artful spark the other stories do. This by itself knocked my rating down to an 8. Also, and this is an observation, not a criticism: the characters and plot are not as deep or involved as some other films. They have no purpose or weight. There is little change in characters that is delved into deeper than a conversation. Whether this is because the narrative only spans two days are because the "epitome of cool" style doesn't want emotional change is unknown. Overall, this is an interesting divergence from regular hero-villain-what have we learned cinema that combines clever story lines with cinematic homage.