Pulp Fiction
(1994)
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Quentin Tarantino's blockbuster follow-up to RESERVOIR DOGS is a breathtaking tribute to old dime store novels about small time hoods and dangerous criminals. It features deftly woven plotlines, creating a mythic Los Angeles underworld of drug dealers, molls, affable hitmen, restaurant-robbing lovers, and a boxer out to scam the mob on his last professional bout. This is the film that put John Travolta back on the map as a major box-office draw in the '90s and officially established Samuel L. Jackson as a superstar. It also inspired a seemingly endless slew of imitators. |
While not as abrasive or compelling as Reservoir Dogs, this follow-up not only confirmed Quentin Tarantino's genius for writing hard-boiled comic dialogue, but also demonstrated a control over a wealth of characters and crossplots that was simply astonishing for a film-maker still, essentially, in the process of learning his trade. Originally entitled Black Mask, the picture went on to scoop the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival and win Oscars for Tarantino and his co-writer Roger Avary. Scorching though the writing is, it needed a high-calibre cast to carry it off. Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Maria de Medeiros and Christopher Walken are excellent, but the revitalised John Travolta and the then largely unknown Samuel L Jackson are unforgettable. As much pop as pulp, this is exhilarating stuff and clearly one of the best films of the 1990s.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Clever, witty, violent celebration of junk culture, drawing rather too heavily on past thrillers but blessed with some excellent performances which crackle with menace.