Pulp Fiction - Review

Pulp Fiction (1994) Directed by: Quinten Tarantino.

Everyone knows Tarantino is a words guy. Not a canary, exactly, but given to the verbose.

To the play of words, and the play of how those words fit in the canon of his actors' careers.

You want to know about this guy, just look at how human he makes mobsters, and how inhumane he makes deviants. There are worse worlds than those of his villainous heroes. Full of tragic misfires and bad timing and the resultant death and mayhem. This movie isn't what anyone had expected.

It's written all out of order, it moves from scene to scene like someone remembering where they were after a long lesson in humility, and let's face it - everyone comes away from it a bit bruised at least. But the movie made careers. Tarantino made this movie for 8m and took in 9m on opening. Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, John Travolta, and Uma Thurman got accolades and noticeable bumps to their careers with this picture. For Mob City, this movie isn't about what happens in it - it's not a story you can recount. Hell, we could leave the movie on repeat all day and probably not be able to put together how the stories all fit together and why - but this movie feels right.

The mundane danger, the sometimes pointless end of a day or a life, the focus that comes from need to just solve this problem of a dead body in your wife Bonnie's house - it feels familiar. Look, they're not bad guys - like the Royale with Cheese is just the Big Mac, these guys are just problem solving at work. Then again, maybe some of them are bad guys. I mean - Marcellus probably won't be winning humanitarian awards, and he certainly has a date with the devil, but that means his tormentors were something worse yet.

Maybe that's the takeaway. There's worse than wise-guys.