This is how romantic comedies should be made

Rating: 8/10 (13 March 2013)

I always thought that this was Tarantino's first movie, however he only wrote it rather than directing it, and also it appears that Reservoir Dogs did come out first. As I understand it, being a writer he had a lot less control over the finished product than he would have had if he directed it as well. Maybe it was because this film was somewhat more complicated than Reservoir Dogs (which is pretty much entirely set in a warehouse, with only a few scenes – and they tend to be flash backs – set outside).
The story is about how a young man's boss gives him the birthday present of a prostitute who then falls in love with him (and him with her) so she renounces her former trade (she was only one for a couple of days) and moves in with him. However, as with all hopeless romantics, he decides to go and teach her old pimp a lesson (who turns out to be played by Gary Oldman) and lands up with copious amounts of uncut cocaine when he takes the wrong case. This, of course, attracts some unwanted attention, and they then decided to flee Detroit to go to Los Angeles to attempt to offload it.
I do not necessarily want to call this a classic Tarantino movie since there is a lot of Scott's influence in it, however we have the quirky characters (such as Floyd, played by Brad Pitt, who is perpetually stoned, and seems to always manage to keep the mafia goons happy). Okay, there is none of the shock violence that one would expect to see in a proper Tarantino movie, but there is a classic, what I would call, a Tarantino standoff at the end of the movie (and I will not go into any more detail than that).
I do really like this film, however the thing that I do think drags it down is the fact that Tarantino was not in the director's seat, which means that we do not get the same impression or feel as other films of his (such as Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, and Django Unchained). In fact, the film seems to try to have those strange and bizarre conversations that tend to punctuate his films, but simply falls flat.