Good, but no Pulp Fiction

Rating: 7/10 (27 May 2002)

Note *** Contains spoilers ***
It's easy to see how Tarantino's unique style evolved, which later allowed him to produce his masterpiece a couple years later. The same elements are in this film as well: intense violence, snappy dialogue, abrupt changes in time (forward and backward) as well as a memorable ensemble of characters. And he uses an ingenious plot device, namely, an experienced crime boss and his son have hired six thieves to pull off a robbery of a diamond wholesaler. The catch is Â– none of the men know each other, and are assigned names such as `Mr. White' `Mr. Blonde' and so forth. This way, if one gets caught, he can't rat out any of the others. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned. One of the `crooks' is actually an undercover cop, as a result, the robbery blows up into a huge shootout, with the men scattering madly to escape a police ambush.
The bulk of the film deals with what happens as the men try to reassemble at the agreed meeting point; in fact, we see very little of the robbery itself, the details are revealed later by the various characters. What Tarantino achieves here is not only an interesting crime drama, but also, due to both the pacing of the direction and the actors' skills, he presents a gut wrenching mood of fear, mistrust, and paranoia which ends up in a classic three way confrontation not unlike the one in `The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'. The movie really does grab the viewer right from the start and doesn't let go until the very end. And Tarantino is to be credited for assembling a first rate cast of classic movie `dirtbags' (Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, etc.).
So why then don't I rate this higher? Part of the problem is that, at least when compared to `Pulp Fiction', this movie is too cynical and nihilistic. `Pulp Fiction' was fun; this film isn't. It leaves you feeling somewhat dirty and slimy, as if you'd spent a couple of hours in a sewer or rummaging through a garbage dump. There's one graphic scene in which one of the robbers, a certified psychopath, engages in extreme acts of cruelty in torturing a cop he'd kidnapped. This was, IMHO, gratuitous and simply didn't need to be there. Also, I didn't like the ending at all. At this point, everyone is dead except for `Mr. White (Keitel) and `Mr. Orange' (Roth) and the police are about to move in. `Orange' admits to `White' that he was the mole. This I have a really hard time buying. After all, he has managed to stay in character despite being shot in the guts, he's witnessed several acts of extreme brutality, and at the very end he wimps out? No way.

So, in the final analysis, this is a decent movie that gives us a taste of what Tarantino has in store for us with `Pulp Fiction', but it's definitely not in the same league as that work of genius.
7/10