Pulp Fiction (1994) -

Essentially this was not my sort of film. I don't like drug culture and excessive swearing and violence doesn't really float my boat either.

I had seen it before, back when it came out in 1994, or probably more likely 1996 when it would have been out to rent on VHS, but I needed to clarify what I remembered of it to write this review and find it a proper place on my list.

I actually liked the style and the direction mostly, but in his role of Jules, Samuel L. Jackson's constant mother effing and jeffing and dropping the N bomb so much, seemed to cheapen what I thought Tarantino was trying to achieve and just for the sake of it.

I did think that John Travolta's character, Vincent Vega, was interesting though and something very different from what I'd seen him do before. It was definitely a better performance than his corny assed, enigmatic, bad guy attempt in 'Sword Fish' (2001).

It did take me a while to realise that Harvey Keitel's, Winston Wolf was the same character that was used in the 'Direct Line' insurance company adverts. I had thought that they'd just built on the actor's reputation for being a gangster, not that they'd actually got the rights to the name and used him to "Fix" things as he did in this film. I have a new appreciation for those ads now and actually Harvey always seems to deliver a well prepared personality in all of his roles.

I will always love Bruce Willis, who was very sexy and in this far more than I remembered as boxer Butch, but his scenes with Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros) got a bit boring after a while.

And actually the whole thing started to drag from that point onwards. It lost its pace.

I enjoyed the 1950's elements that were brought in, despite the late 20th century time frame for the rest of the film. It kind of made things a bit timeless, although it could obviously be date stamped by the technology in the film, cars, phones, etc.

And there is certainly a theme throughout Quentin Tarantino's works that makes it easy to identify his style and I do like that vibe that he tries to achieve, but I also tend to find that he always has to spoil it in some way by pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable, whether that be swearing, drugs or bloodshed. Again it seems to just be for the shock factor. The bloody scene in the car was actually quite funny, but it didn't need everything else as well. The bit in the back room of the gun shop was a tad unnecessary.

At times it did seem like the actors were ad-libbing quite a lot and that helped to make it feel more like a natural conversation, but at other points the script seemed quite basic.

I certainly couldn't fault the soundtrack though, which was varied and laced with some fantastic songs from all over the 20th century.

Without knowing what was coming, having seen it before, I might have struggled with all of the storylines not making sense with each other to start with. And that might have been why I didn't remember it too fondly from that viewing.

For instance, Christopher Walken's cameo as Captain Koons was really out of the blue and reminded me that the story wasn't exactly shown in chronological order. But it worked better with that foreknowledge this time around.

So, although it wasn't really my thing, it wasn't a bad film of its genre. I thought that in some ways 'Reservoir Dogs' (1992) delivered better for its seriousness, but the humour and more lighthearted elements of this one certainly made it an easier watch, without the tension of that other Tarantino film.

609.34/1000.