I vividly remember seeing it originally and knowing about 15 minutes in that it was something special. Two main things struck me:
The dialogue. Nobody was writing dialogue like that at the time. Closest comparison was Woody Allen, and that’s far from what QT did for Pulp Fiction. It was clever, witty and surprising.
There were some big risks taken, and not just the obvious use of the N-word. Imagine how badly having John Travolta dance could have backfired. But it worked because it made sense in context, and that’s a big testament to the beauty of QT’s story and writing.
It’s not just the scene with the needle. A lot of the violence in Pulp Fiction isn’t directly shown. In the opening scene where Jules and Vincent recover the briefcase, there’s no blood at all. We see the first time Brett gets shot in the shoulder, but when Jules and Vincent unload on him a minute later, we only see them firing the guns. The scene is so intense, with Samuel Jackson controlling the room and ratcheting up the tension, that people think they’ve seen a lot more than they have. There’s definitely some blood and guts in the movie, but in a lot of ways it feels more violent that it actually is.
The most violent death in the movie, IMHO, is Travolta killing Marvin in the car. The tightness of the space and the resulting splatter makes it more violent.
But it’s soooo nanchalant - It’s an accident, and then he’s like “oh shit, I just shot Marvin in the head!” and Jackson keeps driving and they argue a bit about what to do then it gets taken down even further by cutting to the whacky Jimmie and then Harvey Kitel becomes the central character and the headless associate is nearly forgotten.
The ease of the gruesome scenes in the film really made it stand out to me.
I will first compliment Tarantino by saying that he does something extremely well that few other directors have pulled off: creating genuine fear and tension. At the hard-to-bear level. He does this in PF, in Reservoir Dogs, in Death Proof (which should be hyphenated, but oh well), and in Inglourious Basterds. Probably some of his other movies as well.
Now here’s where I think Tarantino is weak, and it hurts PF significantly IMHO: his view of the world, of how things work, of how people talk, is pretty childish. Unrealistic, bordering on stupid. Several people here have praised the dialog in PF, and yes, there is some funny stuff in there, but probably 80% of it is blather of a sort in which the characters would never engage if they were real people. In addition to being out of character, a lot of it is supposed to be cool but is just stupid.
In terms of other stuff, PF is pretty dark and dismal, and not in a way I personally find cathartic, like a good Joy Division or Nirvana song. The whole thing with the “dead n***er” is gross and vulgar, a good example of Tarantino trying to be cool but just seeming like a dick.
The movie is made well on the whole with a great soundtrack as has been pointed out, and I would recommend it but not wholeheartedly.
I saw it at an indie theater with a friend before it was in wide release, and we were both blown away by it. To this day, it’s in my top 10 list of movies.
One of my favorite trivia questions: Chronologically, what is the last spoken line in the movie?
Love it, one of my favorite movies. I don’t like the out of order scenes, the whole gimp part was disturbing, but it’s still a terrific movie with great characters and great dialogue.
You guys are right… I don’t remember seeing the needle. QT had so much tension at that point that my emotions may have pushed me over the edge. As I’ve been thinking about it, I’m not sure it was the blood and guts as much as the feelings conveyed. Some of the characters were in desperate situations and others resolved their conflicts with hostile acts. It made me feel a way I didn’t want to feel.
Great movie. Not a typical type of movie, it’s the individual scenes that make it a great movie, not the set of them put together. It holds up for what it is, strong performances, direction, and writing, very interesting characters. Very creative use of coincidence. Other attempts at a similar style haven’t been as good.
I would add that he is able to do this with little more than dialogue between characters interacting in what would normally be relatively mundane situations. ie. Hans Landa eating a Danish.
The world in which Tarantino’s characters occupy is extremely dark, bleak, amoral and nihilistic (including films he wrote or executive produced like True Romance, Natural Born Killers and Killing Zoe and his collaborations with Robert Rodriguez). Not to mention super violent.
Whereas most crime films portray a seedy underworld that sits just out of sight of the “normal” world, one wonders if there actually are any “normal” people in QTs universe (as opposed to dickheads who just ain’t been shot yet).
The only two problems with the “Dead Nigger Storage” scene are:
Tarantino can’t act, so his delivery of that line sucks me right out of the movie, and
B) Maybe this is just me, but we see that Bonnie (Jimmy’s wife) is black. It doesn’t feel…organic to me to have Jimmy throwing the word “nigger” out in such a casual, derogatory manner. True, he knows Jules from before, so it may have been something he said around Jules in the past. But I’ve always felt that Bonnie would have kind of tempered that aspect of Jimmy. But I could be wrong.
I think the only dark, nihilistic, and bleak movie of his is Natural Born Killers, which to me seems very atypical of his films. Indeed he only is credited with the story, so I don’t know how much he had to do with how the actual film turned out - very little is my guess. I only saw it once and my only memory of it is that it was a bad movie which went to some disturbing places.
True Romance is my all-time favorite film and it is such a naive and beautiful celebration of life and an affirmation of truth and love. It’s also really funny. Some people die, yes, but only the ‘bad guys’. Don’t you remember the final scene - the two lovers with their young child on the beach, walking hand in hand and so much still in love. Quentin didn’t direct this movie but he wrote the script (as compared to ‘story’) so he had quite a lot to do with it.
His movies are, in order, cool, violent, funny, sexy and moralistic.
I didn’t get the feeling that Jimmie threw the word around at home or anything. Rather, he was intentionally being an asshole towards Jules because he was pissed and had the upper hand in the situation. Jules “knew” Jimmie as a bit player in the business but it’s not as though they were going to get dinner that weekend or anything so Jimmie could afford to be a dick in some petty way.
Count me as one of the ones who think it’s one of the best movies ever made. I think it should have beaten Forrest Gump as best picture. It’s still a movie I watch somewhat regularly, along with the Kill Bills.
I think a lot of what made Pulp Fiction great was Jules and Vincent. I could watch those two characters literally take out the household trash and it would still be interesting.
I love the mood, the story, the characters, and their individuality. Some of the dialogue is extremely memorable (Jules’s speech, Royale with cheese, Zed’s dead, a few others), but most of it is typical Tarantino for me- a 15 year old trying to impress the adults with gore and language, and “look at me, I’m cool-ness”. He needs to remove himself from his movies at all costs, because frankly he is just distracting when he is on screen.
I admit I completely disagree with the criticism of this scene.
I think Tarantino does a perfectly fine job acting as Jimmy.
Contrast his angry rant at Jules with the way he acts around Mr. Wolf. He is visibly intimidated by Mr. Wolf at first, almost awed by him; Tarantino acts wonderfully in the scene when Wolf gives him a pile of money in return for his linens. Later, when they’re hosing down Jules and Vincent, he’s sucking up to Wolf. He reminds me of that Looney Tunes cartoon where that little dog bounces around Butch the bulldog. His character changes completely between dealing with people he was power over and people he doesn’t. It’s done very well.
Jimmy is tired, pissed off at Jules, and very angry in the kitchen scene, so he’s trying to be mean and sarcastic.
Of course he’s not going to speak to a vaguely underworldish sort-of-friend the way he does to his wife.
Jimmie is one of three white guys who use the word and the other two are almost incidental. Lance asks Vincent if he’s a n** from Inglewood when Vincent starts trying to compare Lance’s heroin to the stuff in Amsterdam and Zed (or Maynard) probably says it when he’s doing the “Eenie, Meenie” bit (the script just says that he mouths the rhyme but I think he says it quietly in the actual film). The other two characters to use it are Jules and Marcellus. Point being that Jimmie’s (over)use of the word is almost certainly intentional beyond just “That’s how they all talk”. It’s a safe way for him to lash out at Jules because, while it’s insulting, it’s nothing that Jules won’t brush off and, at the moment, there’s nothing Jules can do about it since he needs Jimmie’s help.