Pulp Fiction

9.5/10  - Directed by Quentin Tarantino - 1994 - 149 minutes

Few action-filled movies have ever used comedy as effectively as Pulp Fiction. Comedy is so omnipresent in this movie that excluding it from the film’s genre categorization is an insult to the caliber of dialogue and delivery that Quentin Tarantino and his cast of cinema legends brought to Pulp Fiction. In the viciously hysterical world of Tarantino’s greatest movie, no occurrence, no matter how perverse, escapes the wit of the filmmaker’s writing. As critics have repeatedly tried to philosophize the events shown in Pulp Fiction on a deep level, myself and many other viewers enjoy that the film doesn’t take itself that seriously. 

Pulp Fiction follows in nonlinear fashion several associates and employees of gangster Marsellus Wallace and their interwoven misadventures. The key characters are Jules and Vincent (Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta, respectively), two hitmen who face several issues while completing a job for Wallace, Butch (Bruce Willis), a skilled boxer who plays Marsellus by winning a fight he was fixed to lose and subsequently goes on the run, and finally Mia (Uma Thurman), the witty and mysterious wife of Marsellus whom Vincent takes out for dinner to keep her company at the request of his boss. The thread of continuity, particularly in the context of the opening scene, is presented non chronologically, forcing you to piece together the plot only in the final scene. Pulp Fiction relies on this arrangement to delay the payoff of several character introductions (most importantly Butch’s boxing career and Jules’ redemption); it also allows the movie to follow trains of thought as opposed to time, following plots set up in the first chapter to their conclusions and then switching to another that has happened already or is happening concurrently. Each section of the movie forms a unique and spectacular vignette, one that escalates to an unexpected and often gruesome climax and returns to a point of calm where the characters depart, often to reappear in another vignette. It plays out perfectly; the sudden chance encounters and character appearances give a sense of randomness that makes Pulp Fiction like no other film. The viewer is overwhelmed with this understanding that every moment has been determined or foreshadowed by chance: Vince is still in the house when Butch returns for his watch, leading to his sudden death, Butch happens to cross paths with Marsellus while he’s trying to skip town and in the ensuing brawl they, totally by chance, stumble into the shop of a shotgun wielding Confederate psychopath. Tarantino’s use of violence is excessive, but even a viewer fiercely objected to the depictions of criminality would probably admit that the concept of the plot is quite impressive. 

A great deal of Pulp Fiction’s greatness and memorability rests on the visuals. The movie is aggressively stylized; its colorization is warm, vibrant and heavily saturated and in harshly high contrast. One could even say that the reason that Pulp Fiction is sometimes treated as a crime film over a comedy is because of the slick, lurid visuals that lend the film a greater edge. For Tarantino, this was in no way revolutionary but rather a result of his “cultural watershed” approach to making movies where French New Wave pools with film noir and 1950s American pop culture. This fixation on stylistic recreation could easily become tiring, but the homages fade into the narrative to the point that they become natural. 

The creation of Pulp Fiction is itself the dream of many aspiring filmmakers: The cinephile making a movie that winds up embodying so many of the best qualities of great cinema. It’s not overstuffed with special effects or huge fantastical action sequences. Instead, the electricity of Pulp Fiction comes from the joy it takes in rapid dialogue and the exuberant, perpetually comedic and stylized approach to crime. Tarantino, in the years following this movie, admittedly has diminished his image. One could even credibly accuse him of casting himself in a small role in the movie exclusively to make liberal use of a racial slur on the big screen. But in spite of the major flaws of its director, Pulp Fiction remains a fantastic watch.