Just as Dogs is a heist film where you don't see the heist, Pulp is a boxer-takes-a-dive flick where you never see the bout, opting instead for conversations about muffins and Deliverance-style rape. Whereas most crime flicks would breeze over the rendezvous between Vincent and Mia, here we actually get to go on the date- polite chit-chat, awkward silences, bad dancing - before it spirals off into a drugged-up disaster.
PULP FICTION PLOT MOVIE
Into a cadre of movie archetypes - the assassin, the mob boss, the gangster's moll, the boxer who throws a fight - Tarantino injects a reality check that is as funny as it is refreshing. Indeed, Pulp Fiction operates in the hinterland between reality and movie reality. As such, the film also boasts a European feel both in specific incident - the day-in-the-life-of-a-hit-man strand acknowledges the influence of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai (1967) and the Vincent-Mia's twist has the same spirit as the impromptu dance in Jean-Luc Godard's crime flick Bande A Part (1964) - and in its rather intelligent sense of deconstructing Hollywood history. Peppered with great moments eaten up by actors working at the top of their game (Travolta, Willis and Thurman have never been better, and the film created the aura of greatness that currently surrounds Jackson) Pulp's witty writing, pop culture-surfing, gleeful amorality, cult tuneology and hyperkinetic energy has redefined the crime genre for the foreseeable future.ĭrawing on the compendium format of Black Mask magazine and Mario Bava's gothic flick Black Sabbath (1963) as well as the twisty-turny crime literature of Frederick Brown and Charles Willeford, Tarantino wrote Pulp on the European press push for Reservoir Dogs (1991) - hence Vincent Vega (Travolta )'s detailed knowledge of Amsterdam minutiae. Making a mockery of the difficult-second-film cliche, Tarantino weaves a patchwork of crime film history into something shiny and new.
Whether it is unlimited moolah, the soul of Crime Lord Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) or the gold lame suit worn by Val Kilmer's Elvis in True Romance (1993) really misses the point of Tarantino's molotov cocktail of a picture. The least interesting thing about Pulp Fiction is what is in that bloody briefcase.