IronWatcher’s review published on Letterboxd:
Watched on Blu-Ray
Director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino never seemed to see gangsters as dapper, suit-wearing, willing slaves. Already in his debut film "Reservoir Dogs", Tarantino drew the murdering scoundrels not according to the well-tried, typical mainstream Hollywood pattern, but showed that they also have a life. A life with friends, hobbies and other trivial activities. Unforgettable here, for example, is the scene in the restaurant where all the gangsters sit at one table and discuss Madonna's song "Like A Virgin" and the meaning of tipping.
With his second work, "Pulp Fiction," Tarantino goes all in on the gangsters, showing them as normal people who talk about insubstantial banalities with friends, argue about the sexual meaning of foot massages or joke about pork. In Tarantino's cult film, the gangsters are thus the core of the story, not the business, not the famous and mysterious suitcase, but the gangsters.
The film opens with the parallel pair of Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) sitting in a restaurant talking. For four minutes. "What, they're just talking?" some explosion and action saturated "movie fans" might want to think now, however this dialogue, and in fact every other dialogue in the film, is unique, leaving you staring at the screen as if mesmerized. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny talk about robbing banks with the help of a cell phone and wonder why restaurants never get robbed. The two narrow-minded thugs pull out their shooting irons and suddenly the money-orange "Pulp Fiction" lettering on a dark background flickers across the screen and the aurally penetrating opening credits roll. In the middle of the credits, when the names of the actors are still listed, the music breaks off, you hear the shrill and annoyingly typical "tune" sound of a radio when you set a frequency and a song from the 70s plays. The two gangsters Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) are shown, dressed in fancy suits, driving through the city in a car and making jokes about the legal use of hashish in Amsterdam, about French McDonald's, about European eating habits and the metric system.
You are riveted by this dialogue as well. You listen to the voices of these two grown men, who rant about some trivial things. An extremely grotesque and paradoxical situation. Two gangsters talking about such things. And indeed, the grotesque is a strong and important stylistic device in Tarantino's film. You are thrown into the deep end. Without any prior knowledge, you watch these characters babble on about seemingly unrelated, random topics. You don't ask why they are talking about this topic. Nor does the viewer inquire who these people are. That's how spellbound you are by the wit and nonsense of the dialogue.
Jules and Vincent were on their way to get a suitcase from an apartment, however, this venture ends in a massacre. In addition, at the behest of his boss Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), Vincent takes his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out to a wacky dance club, but this "pastime," as Vincent calls it, also ends in a fiasco. Earlier, the boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) had already sold his fight to Marcellus Wallace, but beats his opponent to death in the fight, which is why the black giant is now on his heels. As he is about to escape to a Pacific island with his girlfriend Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), he notices the absence of his golden watch. This one golden watch that his watch grandfather bought and passed on and on.
The plot unfolds in an episodic style. Tarantino tells the story of these characters and has them converge accurately and unerringly at the end. Almost like an old artistic master of his trade, like a puppeteer one would like to think, the then 31-year-old plays with space and time and shifts the actions and characters loosely, elegantly and without problems back and forth, so that in the hullabaloo still a razor-sharp structure is recognizable. What is inimitable about "Pulp Fiction," however, is its dialogue. Screenwriter Tarantino combines gruff gangster slang with sharp wit and clever wit. Each dialogue has a structure, an individual and distinctive framework, but above all, the timing of the shrewd punchlines and black, grotesque humor is unparalleled. Since "Pulp Fiction," Brutalo gangsters have been funny and laughable as they work off assignments in fancy suits, philosophize about God and the world, and always have a flippant quip in store.
It is precisely through such meaningless and irrelevant dialogues that "Pulp Fiction" is led through most of the film, for example about the definition of a miracle or about the feeling when killing. Only a few of the dialogues are really important for understanding the plot, but it is precisely because of them that "Pulp Fiction" has a distinctive, self-referential style that does not bow to the usual Hollywood conventions, but almost runs them over. "Distinctive" is a good keyword. Almost every spoken sentence in this film can be taken as a reference. It's a film that gets better and better the more you see it, as you find it easier and easier to speak along with the dialogue. The famous "Say 'what' again!" scene is arguably legendary, and Jules' "Ezekiel 25:17" Bible quote probably one of the most quoted and remembered moments in film history. At least as prominent is the "hamburger" scene, the "foot massage" scene, and the "head shot" scene. Distinctive! Individual! Unique!
Equally noteworthy is the film's fantastic soundscape. There are no sound effects, nor are there any pieces composed especially for the film. The background music consists exclusively of songs from soul, country to funk music from the 50s, 60s and 70s. If one were to listen to the music without having known the film, many pop, rap and metal-saturated youngsters would turn away disinterested. But because of the visual and visual impressions you get when you listen to the songs in the film, these songs flourish into true witnesses of 90's pop culture. Listening to these tracks, you automatically suggest the characteristic scene that goes with them. They perfectly underline the very coherent scene of underground crime and follows our two funny antiheroes on their trip from one mess to the next.
The acting performances more than do justice to the film's action. It is these that make the film what it is. Be it John Travolta as the dancing leg swinging pessimist, or Samuel L. Jackson as the God philosophizing and Bible quoting killer. These two actors carry the film most of the time with bravura and John Travolta catapulted himself once again into the elite of Hollywood actors and Samuel L. Jackson finally became world famous at the age of 46 and has been the one and only true Samuel L. Jackson ever since. Both actors were even nominated for an Oscar for their performances (Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Supporting Actor), but were beaten by Tom Hanks for "Forrest Gump") and Martin Landau for "Ed Wood".
Bruce Willis also showed after two "Die Hard" movies that he can definitely play more challenging roles and was also hired more and more for such. The fight for survival between Butch and Marcellus Wallace, is degraded to an absolute laughing stock after the most unexpected and improbable of all cases has occurred and is one of the funniest as well as the most grotesque and disturbing moments in the film. The very fact that this insane balancing act succeeds is a testament to the class of the actors and the director. All the supporting actors play their parts just as brilliantly. From Uma Thurman as the coke-snorting gangster bride to Harvey Keitel as the pedantic and ultra-cool cleaner, to Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer as crazed small-time crooks, to Eric Stoltz and Rosanna Arquette as a drug-dealing couple, or even Christopher Walken as a war veteran with a watch up his ass and Ving Rhames as a big, black gangster boss and everyone else who shows up in some form or another. All do a superb job and deserve high praise. Even Quentin Tarantino makes a good impression as an actor, although he is not one.
