Review: Pulp Fiction

Movie Review: Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is one of the most daring, puzzling, and ultimately exciting pieces of cinema to hit the screen in years. As wholly original as it is a copy of hundreds of films before it about tales of hit-men and criminals, it dares you to step out of the dull and enter a colorful, exhilarating world that could only be Los Angeles. The intensity level of the movie is off the scale. People are laughing like crazy in the theater to the intelligent dialog and other scenes that have the audience gasping for air in shock over what just happened. Although one might say that Pulp Fiction is overly violent and disturbing, it is in fact, one of the greatest movies ever produced. Quentin Tarantino's incredible screenplay, the intensity of the actors, and music to set the mood, created movie worthy five stars.

Pulp Fiction is rebellious in the way that it manipulates all usual plot structures by twisting time to satisfy its own system. The film tells a series of interlocking stories involving; two hit-men, a boxer and his French girlfriend, a crime boss and his mischievous wife, a small time drug dealer, two lovebird robbers, and two hillbilly rapists. However, all these stories revolve around three main plots; Vincent (John Travolta) taking the crime boss's wife out (Umma Thurman), the crime boss asks the boxer (Bruce Willis) to throw out the boxing match, and the two lovebirds decision and outcome about robbing a restaurant. All of these stories added to the mixture of comical violence and the fascinatingly vulgar dialogue create the elements for one of the most shamelessly entertaining film of all time. Part of the genius of this film is the way Tarantino manipulates the conventional plot structure to make the impossible possible. It is an odd phenomenon how he could alter time so intentionally, yet finish with a product that is not only easily understood, but flows more smoothly than it would have it he had told it in a linear fashion.

The intense acting in the movie Pulp Fiction, as well as the narration, is another aspect that made the movie as great as it was. The two hit-men, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), make the best screen pair. Travolta and Jackson play off each other with perfect timing and relaxed ease, carrying on intriguing conversations about the slight differences between Europe and America, "In Paris, you can buy a beer in McDonalds," the nature of miracles, and the relative importance of foot-messages. In a way Travolta and Jackson deliver the defined dialogue written by Tarantino, which makes even the most ordinary people both hilarious and fascinating.