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Quentin Tarantino is the Jerry Lee Lewis of cinema, a pounding performer
who
doesn't care if he tears up the piano, as long as everybody is rocking.
His new movie
"Pulp Fiction" is a comedy about blood, guts, violence, strange sex, drugs,
fixed
fights, dead body disposal, leather freaks, and a wristwatch that makes
a dark
journey down through the generations.
Seeing this movie last May at the Cannes Film Festival, I knew it was either
one of
the year's best films, or one of the worst. Tarantino is too gifted a filmmaker
to make
a boring movie, but he could possibly make a bad one: Like Edward D. Wood
Jr.,
proclaimed the Worst Director of All Time, he's in love with every shot
- intoxicated
with the very act of making a movie. It's that very lack of caution and
introspection
that makes "Pulp Fiction" crackle like an ozone generator: Here's a director
who's
been let loose inside the toy store, and wants to play all night.
The screenplay, by Tarantino and Roger Avary, is so well-written in a scruffy,
fanzine way that you want to rub noses in it - the noses of those zombie
writers who
take "screenwriting" classes that teach them the formulas for "hit films."
Like "Citizen
Kane," "Pulp Fiction" is constructed in such a nonlinear way that you could
see it a
dozen times and not be able to remember what comes next. It doubles back
on
itself, telling several interlocking stories about characters who inhabit
a world of
crime and intrigue, triple-crosses and loud desperation. The title is perfect.
Like
those old pulp mags named "Thrilling Wonder Stories" and "Official Detective,"
the
movie creates a world where there are no normal people and no ordinary
days -
where breathless prose clatters down fire escapes and leaps into the dumpster
of
doom.
The movie resurrects not only an aging genre but also a few careers.
John Travolta stars as Vincent Vega, a mid-level hit man who carries out
assignments for a mob boss. We see him first with his partner Jules (Samuel
L.
Jackson); they're on their way to a violent showdown with some wayward
Yuppie
drug dealers, and are discussing such mysteries as why in Paris they have
a French
word for Quarter Pounders. They're as innocent in their way as Huck and
Jim,
floating down the Mississippi and speculating on how foreigners can possibly
understand each other.
Travolta's career is a series of assignments he can't quite handle. Not
only does he
kill people inadvertently ("The car hit a bump!") but he doesn't know how
to clean
up after himself. Good thing he knows people like Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel),
who
specializes in messes, and has friends like the character played by Eric
Stoltz, who
owns a big medical encyclopedia, and can look up emergency situations.
Travolta and Uma Thurman have a sequence that's funny and bizarre. She's
the wife
of the mob boss (Ving Rhames), who orders Travolta to take her out for
the night.
He turns up stoned, and addresses an intercom with such grave, stately
courtesy
Buster Keaton would have been envious. They go to Jack Rabbit Slim's, a
1950s
theme restaurant where Ed Sullivan is the emcee, Buddy Holly is the waiter,
and they
end up in a twist contest. That's before she overdoses and Stoltz, waving
a syringe
filled with adrenaline, screams at Travolta, "YOU brought her here, YOU
stick in the
needle! When I bring an O.D. to YOUR house, I'LL stick in the needle!"
Bruce Willis and Maria de Medeiros play another couple: He's a boxer named
Butch
Coolidge who is supposed to throw a fight, but doesn't. She's his sweet,
naive
girlfriend, who doesn't understand why they have to get out of town "right
away." But
first he needs to make a dangerous trip back to his apartment to pick up
a priceless
family heirloom - a wristwatch. The history of this watch is described
in a flashback,
as Vietnam veteran Christopher Walken tells young Butch about how the watch
was
purchased by his great-grandfather, "Private Doughboy Orion Coolidge,"
and has
come down through the generations - and through a lot more than generations,
for
that matter. Walken's monologue builds to the movie's biggest laugh.
The method of the movie is to involve its characters in sticky situations,
and then let
them escape into stickier ones, which is how the boxer and the mob boss
end up
together as the captives of weird leather freaks in the basement of a gun
shop. Or
how the characters who open the movie, a couple of stick-up artists played
by Tim
Roth and Amanda Plummer, get in way over their heads. Most of the action
in the
movie comes under the heading of crisis control.
If the situations are inventive and original, so is the dialogue. A lot
of movies these
days use flat, functional speech: The characters say only enough to advance
the plot.
But the people in "Pulp Fiction" are in love with words for their own sake.
The
dialogue by Tarantino and Avary is off the wall sometimes, but that's the
fun. It also
means that the characters don't all sound the same: Travolta is laconic,
Jackson is
exact, Plummer and Roth are dopey lovey-doveys, Keitel uses the shorthand
of the
busy professional, Thurman learned how to be a moll by studying soap operas.
It is part of the folklore that Tarantino used to work as a clerk in a
video store, and
the inspiration for "Pulp Fiction" is old movies, not real life. The movie
is like an
excursion through the lurid images that lie wound up and trapped inside
all those
boxes on the Blockbuster shelves. Tarantino once described the old pulp
mags as
cheap, disposable entertainment that you could take to work with you, and
roll up
and stick in your back pocket. Yeah, and not be able to wait until lunch,
so you
could start reading them again.
PULP FICTION 
Vincent Vega John Travolta
Butch Coolidge Bruce Willis
Jules
Samuel L. Jackson
Mia
Uma Thurman
Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Running time: 154 minutes. Classified R
(for strong
graphic violence and drug use, pervasive strong language and some sexuality).
Opens today at local theaters.
Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc.
Date of publication: 10/14/1994
