Look for the signs, the miracles in your life, never dismiss anything as a freak coincidence.

Rating: 9/10 (23 August 2012)

Is there a theme and message in this crime-action-thriller? Yes there is, and not only is it explicit but also has a subliminal, implicit theme. The theme of noticing, recognizing, and interpreting clues, signs, omens, apparent coincidences, and miraculous happenings and their significances in the choices you then make.
There are two distinct, divergent views (and type of persons) on the occurrence of inter-connected events in the world. The first or traditional view is that apart from the mundane, any strange or unusual or inter-connected events are due to super-natural connected causes or divine intervention, and the other is the modern scientific-atheist view that these are merely coincidences, chance, or accidental events and only mistakenly appear to be strangely connected only because they are extremely improbable. According to this latter view, given enough time, even a monkey with a typewriter can eventually produce a Shakespearean tragedy, just as a few basic elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen etc., given enough time and all the right conditions (near impossibility), will eventually come together to form a highly complex living organism like a bacteria out of sheer chance...by now you get the picture.
In this movie, Jules who is one of the key characters is of the first type, and his partner Vincent is not exactly of the second type but rather the type who doesn't give a damn either way – the kind that never reflects upon any happening. When the 'miracle' happens, Jules immediately recognizes it, whereas Vincent couldn't care less, and so Jules knows that this sign, the omen, the extremely unlikely happening is of direct significance for him and him alone and immediately decides to make a choice – to make a U-turn in his life of crime. That decision empowers him, and when he comes to face another event where he has the choice either to kill or not to kill – he makes the right one.
Jules stands redeemed and empowered, but Vincent has learned nothing and meets his fate as a man would who has lived his life 'unconsciously'. Samuel Jackson as Jules stands out as the most intense actor and delivers his lines as a champion boxer going for the knockout punch. The others are really peripheral characters – the ones who fill in the scene to make it more colorful.
If this movie makes you more conscious of the unusual happenings in your life and then correctly derive their significance effectively for yourself, rather than dismiss the whole 'miracle of life' as mere chance coincidences, you will have got the message of this film, otherwise its good entertainment only.