Crash-bang-whalop from a director with something spanking new to offer.

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2004)

A set of criminals gather in a garage to discuss a jewel heist that has gone tragically wrong.
What a fantastic film to start a career with. Tarantino shows that while he has never been to film school he knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. This doesn't take cinema to a new level but shows how to make a simple story - that could have been a cheap TV movie in someone else's hands - in to something epic. Yes epic, not a word I use very often.
If you want proof that stories are in the telling, the mood and the music just look here. The story is nothing, but the delivery and the acting make it what it is.
There really is no substantial plot. It is just throw you off balance cinema. Roth plays a man bleeding to death on a floor through most of the movie: what a fantastic device and so original. Who would have thought of that? Who indeed would not only have thought of that, but used it so effectively?
The criminals (known by colours - or is it colors?) are funny, dangerous and strangely real. Real people that squabble over names, food and even tips. People that go from killing to small talk to humour as if it as all the same thing, in the same way that Prince goes from talking about sex to god as if it is also part of the same thing. Is this real? Is this how real criminals talk and behave. Not in the main, no, but probably true of a minority. The only problem - beyond this movie - is whether he can capture other types of criminals. The question remains open.
Criminals, cops and bystanders are all out to earn a dollar and return home to watch TV. The criminal is caught by one policeman and takes it out on another, who knows nothing about the original crime. People are in the wrong place at the wrong time. We have outlaws, but they are 9-2-5 outlaws, they want to eat out and drive nice cars. They are career criminals for whom the real world is too much like hard work. They want to live off the fat of the land, like the idle rich. They may have had real jobs (indeed they say they have), but it is not for them.
As I said earlier, the plot is nothing. It is a frame for mood and atmosphere (what Kubrick took twenty years to learn Tarantino knows day one) and how it all turns out doesn't really matter. It is a journey, not a destination.
Is the film moral? Not really. It is a mixed bag, but he is more moral than some comedies where out-of-work middle aged couples ride of in to the sunset having robbed a bank. Movie morals are different, it is not that people are dead, but how they died that matters. If you believe that cinema should include all people from society then films such as this should exist.
Sadly Tarantino loses control in the "ear" scene. I have nothing against the haunted house experience, but you can only spend so much time in it before emerging in to light. Making the audience nauseous is no achievement. Nor is shocking it. We can all do it. In life or on film.
All movies have to have drama and to create all drama we must have conflict. We haven't much to play with here. It is a minimalist playbox, although we have the robbery (used sparingly and not at the beginning as most fly-by-nights would use it) and some gun play, but these are sidelines. This is a relationship play. People (criminals) that want both anarchy and order. They come together for greed, but the pecking order has to be established. It is not easy being leader of the anarchist, they are, by nature free thinkers that play and work for themselves.
It doesn't let anyone believe that being a criminal is easy or a good career options. After all, as I hinted above, who are you working with? Other criminals who only want to look after themselves and would happily steal for you as much as the original target. This doesn't make it as clear as say Goodfellers, but the message is there all the same.
When this film came out it maybe it wasn't as big a deal as is made out to be now. However the industry stood up and took notice as did most film buffs. This is something new and - as has been shown with the better Pulp Fiction - the product of someone that has the seeds of magic in his fingers. Sadly QT started to believe his own hype, and worse started thinking that he only had to please himself to please his audience.

The problem is that QT is like the sexy girl your old school class. The problem isn't that she is sexy, the problem is that she knows it.