Pulp Fiction [DVD]

Writer and director Quentin Tarantino’s hugely successful follow-up to ‘Reservoir Dogs’ melds three dime-store stories set in lowlife LA into one cohesive thriller. Butch (Bruce Willis) is an over-the-hill boxer paid to take a fall, who instead does a runner with mobster Merselius’s (Ving Rhames) money. Meanwhile, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are two hitmen who aren’t having the easiest of mornings, and Pumpkin and Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) are two would-be bank robbers who are planning a heist in a restaurant. Winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes and an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
With Pulp Fiction writer-director Quentin Tarantino stunned the filmmaking world, exploding into prominence as a cinematic heavyweight contender after initial success with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. But Pulp Fiction was more than just the follow-up to an impressive first feature, or the winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, or a script stuffed with the sort of juicy bubblegum dialogue actors just love to chew, or the vehicle that re-established John Travolta on the A-list, or the relatively low-budget ($8 million) independent showcase for an ultra-hip mixture of established marquee names and rising stars from the indie scene (among them Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Julia Sweeney, Kathy Griffin and Phil Lamar). It was more, even, than an unprecedented $100-million-plus hit for indie distributor Miramax. Pulp Fiction was a sensation. It packs so much energy and invention into telling its non-chronologically interwoven short stories (all about temptation, corruption and redemption among modern criminals, large and small) it leaves viewers both exhilarated and exhausted–hearts racing and knuckles white from the ride. (Oh, and the infectious, surf-guitar-based soundtrack is tastier than a Royale with Cheese.) –Jim Emerson