Pointless, immature and excessively crude glorified action film from the world's most pointless, immature and excessively crude man!

Rating: 1/10 (7 June 2005)

Simply put Pulp Fiction is the silliest film I have every seen, it puts Battlefield Earth and The Long Kiss Goodnight (spookily starring the two leads from this film) firmly in the shadows, they look like rare vintage wines next to this cheap plonk. The fact it is so highly revered by so many, and even considered profound, makes me fear for the very existence of modern society. There are some fundamental reasons I dislike this film with a passion, the first being the pacing and substance, the film really mirrors it's director to perfection, yapping and a mumblin and a stumblin from start to finish, enthusiastically about....Nothing! If Qentin was not such an untalented, cretinous buffoon I would call him the new David Lynch. The only substance in PF is of the white powdery verity, the film is just a collection of sick images splashed on screen willy nilly strung loosely together by some sharp but pointless dialogue. The film was too crude, made purely for shock value. When violence, male rape, drug abuse, accidental shootings and other such fun filled things are packaged as cool and even as comedy in the hands of an immature director you get a highly irresponsible film, and to sell it as some sort of 'smart art' piece is doubly irresponsible. Then there is the complete lack of character development and depth. There are no characters, only 2 dimensional machines created solely to perform acts of severe violence and drop in a few wise cracks, they perform actions in one scene that seem to have no effect or relation to what happens in their next scene. Not one of them is even slightly likable or in possession of any redeemable characteristics apart from perhaps Butch (Willis), did I mention he is a violent thug, murderer and a thief? Then there is Mia who seems to have little purpose in the film other than an excuse to include the very uncomfortable scene where an over weight Travolta boogies on the dance floor. Yes she is in the 'famous' needle scene as well, but what else? The section featuring Vince and Mia was just dropped and barely mentioned again like Mia herself, so what was the point? A question I asked of the film throughout. I quickly realised that nobody in the film was there to be developed, any one of them could have been dropped (apart from Butch) or their actions performed by a completely new character without making a spot of difference to the film, their actions were not to be the subject of scrutiny. That would be asking too much of the Tarantino who is clearly only interested in attempting to make stuff look cool. He is the most unoriginal man on the planet only capable of tacky 'homage' (ie, he is a thief) action films. Don't believe me? Watch Kill Bill where he even pays homage to his own film, this one! I do give credit to him in one respect. He realised that if he re-jigged the order of plot events he could not only look artistically swish but he could disguise the fact that the story is not worth the toilet paper it was written on, impressing upon many the fallacy that the hack job narrative structure enhanced the story. The direction is experimental but quite frankly tacky and laughable at times. One scene featuring a near comatose Butch in particular comes to mind, the camera is stuck dead still on him while Marsellus (Rhames) uses the m-f word 100 times in about 5 minutes, totally amateurish. The only memorable performance is from Jackson, who could make the ingredients list of a packet of cookies sound fun, he is offset by a flat performance from Travolta. That brings me to the 'witty' dialogue which, apart from the violence, is the crux of the piece. It is unfortunate then, that this dialogue basically consists of idiots talking a load of nonsense about such deep things as cheeseburgers, milkshake, foot massages, cleaning up skull and brain chunks and some coffee that is described as gourmet s**t. Some dialogue was witty but mostly it was just utterly pointless, the characters deliver it with such perceived style and coolness despite the fact they were talking about, frankly, a lot of BS. Add this to the fact there is (barring brief moments in Butch's story) no plot, no emotion and especially no substance and you have one worthless film. "Ah you don't get it" they all scream, don't make me laugh, the circular narrative and the ham-fisted attempt at redemption at the end does not equal substance. The ending was hilariously cheap, obviously a desperate attempt to justify a pointless 2 hour string of images in one strike. Is it meant to be profound? Well after sitting through the whole film which consisted of characters that were never developed adequately, where no actions or events were properly tackled, challenged or explored with any great thought or depth during which I was never required to care even once, I was presented with one of the most cheesy, pointless monologues in film history. Oh and a parody of QT's fans - the briefcase is opened and they stare at the shiny thing and go "ooooh, it beautiful". It is all a hollow gesture when you consider the character that delivers the speech and his actions directly following it, combined with the entire sequence of stupid events that precede it. Many movies these days suffer similar problems at their conclusion because of obvious limitations in plot structure and development, some have endings that invalidate the rest of the film, others have endings that are invalidated by the rest of the film, with Pulp Fiction QT has somehow achieved both simultaneously. You'll figure out what I mean. As a rule I don't usually let a film's director put me off the film itself but, after Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino films are now the exception.