Just for the waitresses

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2009)

The Olde Ones tell of a humble video store worker, a young man with a gigantic chin who never stopped talking... but as we were to find out, there was more to Quentin Tarantino than just the gift of the gab. His debut may be the end result of learning every trick from Stanley Kubrick to Samuel Fuller (and ingesting every bungled heist movie from The Taking of Pelham 123 to Ringo Lam's City On Fire) but QT set about revitalising both Indiewood and crime cinema with a brash panache.
The post-modern template was set down here: shrewd pop-culture references, a talky, 'realistic' script - and committed performances from the edgy likes of Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi. And then he did it all over again, and on a bigger scale, with Pulp Fiction.