Django Unchained

At different points during Django Unchained (2012) I felt like I should be amused or excited, offended or sickened. But Quentin Tarantino's new flick mostly inspired indifference. You can only see the same tricks umpteen times, and Django's only marked distinction from Kill Bill or Inglourious Basterds is its genre.

Texas 1858. Dentist-bounty hunter King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) frees slave Django (Jamie Foxx) and enlists him as a partner. King needs Django to identify the Brittle brothers, three slave overseers-turned-outlaws. The two quickly bond, with King agreeing to help Django track down and rescue wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Unfortunately Broomhilda now works for Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a brutal Mississippi plantation owner with a nose for intrigue.

Tarantino's nominal branching out from crime films has paid off handsomely. Audiences loved Kill Bill's blood splatter and Uma Thurman's strong performance, while Basterds won acclaim as a deconstruction of war films. Yet Groggy finds Tarantino's style extremely grating when applied to other genres. Django Unchained approaches the Western as Pulp Fiction in Stetson and chaps. (Aside from cribbing Luis Bacalov's title tune and a cutesy Franco Nero cameo, it bears no resemblance to Sergio Corbucchi's Django.)

Django Unchained is a lumpen, self-indulgent mess. Scenes go on interminably for their own sake, dissolving the expected tension and humor. You initially admire Tarantino's audacity in staging a Birth of the Nation-style Klan rally with the vigilantes complaining about ill-fitting masks. When it goes on for five minutes though the charm wears off. Every scene is like this, with Tarantino seeing no need to cut a single frame. For all the pretty scenery and loquacious persiflage there's not enough to justify the 165 minute run time.

The film's treatment of slavery raised many eyebrows. Suffice to say Tarantino dwells on its nastier side, from whippings and dog maulings to brutal slave fights. These scenes aren't played for laughs but feel jarring contrasted with Tarantino's jerky zooms, blood-gushing shootouts and jaunty hip-hop score. Django Unchained riffs on exploitation films like Mandingo and Boss Nigger, without their sleazy earnestness. Instead it plays like a really rotten joke.

In fairness, Tarantino gets some things right. Django's evolution from submissive slave to self-assured action hero is an effective character arc, making him an amiable black avenger. His buddy dynamic with King provides the film drive and focus. Tarantino sends up "scientific" racism by making Candie a phrenologist who justifies slavery by studying a Negro skull. Making Candie's house servant (Samuel L. Jackson) an even worse villain is another nice touch. These bits show the film Django Unchained could have been.

But mainly Django is just repetitive and overly familiar. Long passages merely rehash Basterds: King's verbose introduction, a "private" conversation auf Deutsch, Candie's tense dinner party, the explosive ending. Robert Richardson provides gorgeous photography but the landscapes and luscious detail don't advance the story. The last 20 minutes are completely superfluous. Tarantino throws in nifty homages to Spaghetti favorites like A Professional Gun (the bleeding carnation) and Sabata (King's derringer-rig) but they're fleeting moments.

Jamie Foxx is solid. Django's not the deepest character but Foxx has the perfect defiant swagger to pull him off. Christoph Waltz though falls too readily back on Hans Landa shtick. If Waltz has anything else in his repertoire he'd better break it out soon. At least he's less irritating than Leonardo DiCaprio, whose cartoon Southerner quickly grows annoying. Samuel L. Jackson's vicious Uncle Tom proves the most memorable character.

Tarantino provides numerous B-lister cameos. Not only Franco Nero but Bruce Dern, Don Johnson, Robert Carradine, James Remar, James Russo, M.C. Ginley and Michael Parks make brief appearances. More ill-advised are Jonah Hill as a budding Klansman and Tarantino himself, sporting the gnarliest Aussie accent this side of an Outback commercial. These walk-ons are fun but don't add up to much.

Which sums up Django Unchained perfectly. A movie with this much violence and controversial content ought to provoke some reaction. Sadly, Django Unchained is just more Tarantino silliness in a slightly different package.

Kill Bill Vol. 2

Three months after slogging through Quentin Tarantino's interminable Scene-It game known as Kill Bill Vol. 1, I finally worked up the guts to check out the second installment. And whadaya know, it's a completely different movie. Whereas Kill Bill Vol. 1 was obnoxious, self-indulgent and stupid, Kill Bil Vol. 2 is obnoxious, self-indulgent, stupid and painfully overlong! Bonza!

The film picks up where the original left off. The Bride (Uma Thurman) is still out for revenge, and is gunning for the three remaining assassins responsible for the rude interruption of her wedding: Budd (Michael Madsen), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and, of course, Bill (David Carradine). There are also flashbacks to her wedding, her training with Chinese kung fu master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), etc., but who really cares? Not I, said the fly.

Most of what you loved or hated about Kill Bill Vol. 1 is present in the sequel: the garishly over-the-top, gore-soaked violence, the deliberately cheesy dialogue, the obnoxious homages to Spaghetti Westerns and Kung Fu flicks, and shots of Uma Thurman's feet. What's added, however, is a terrible pace. The movie features odd and inappropriate flashbacks that contribute nothing to the story (see Budd get fired from his job! See the Bride's pregnancy test!). And then we get to the finale, which consists of the Bride and Bill yammering on about Superman for about forty minutes straight. Some of you might find that cool. I find it tiresome.

Supposedly more plot-heavy, character-driven and "mature" than its predecessor, Kill Bill Vol. 2 is, if anything, even more ridiculous. Besides wasting our time with pointless digressions and Billy Jack-level dialogue, Tarantino gives us an utterly mean-spirited piece of drek that resorts to cartoonishness, toilet humor and gratuitous gore to keep things interesting. Everything is technically competent, but to what end?

You can play the satire or homage card if you like, but you won't get anywhere with me. That the movie is deliberately over-the-top just adds insult to injury: it smacks of calculated contempt for the audience, an acknowledgment by Mr. Tarantino that his goal is puerile cinematic masturbation, ejaculating his fantasies all over the screen and calling it art.

Let's get a few things straight here: It's okay to have a non-linear storyline if the non-linear-ness serves a purpose. It's okay if you use homages that are organic to the material, not if they exist to call attention to your DVD collection. It's okay to use "borrowed" music, but it's less acceptable to shoehorn pieces from A Professional Gun and A Fistful of Dollars into scenes that don't warrant their use. (I will concede that a piece from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is very well placed.) It's okay to be slow-paced and talky if the talk is interesting; if not, you're just boring the audience.

If that was your goal, Mr. Tarantino, then mission accomplished. If not, you suck.

Uma Thurman continues her fine performance as the Bride, while the late David Carradine gets by on sheer charisma and screen presence. Michael Madsen and Daryl Hannah have much more to do than in the original, and come off reasonably well. Gordon Liu is funny, even if his beard-stroking schtick gets tiresome real fast. We have good actors doing excellent work with awful material; why couldn't Mr. Tarantino have given them something worthwhile?

What more can I say about the Kill Bill films? Well, I didn't pay any money to see them, so I can't claim any indignance on that score. I could weep over the four-and-a-half hours lost, but I'm the master of wasting time so I'd have no leg to stand on. Maybe, after all this negativity, I ought to say something nice?

Okay: It wasn't Transformers.

Sin City

Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller (with the help of "guest director" Quentin Tarantino) bring Miller's gothic neo-noir graphic novel to the big screen, with generally positive results. The movie is a stylish mixed bag; it has its share of false moments and ridiculous bits, but as a piece of bravura pulp fiction, it's generally entertaining.

Set in the garish, hideously corrupt Basin City, the film's episodic plot follows the stories of a gaggle of malcontents, crooks and would-be moral men. Our primary protagonists: Hartigan (Bruce Willis), a good cop who goes to jail for killing the pedophile son (Nick Stahl) of the powerful Senator Roarke (Powers Boothe), to protect little girl (and later stripper) Nancy (Jessica Alba) from Roarke's vengeance; (Mickey Rourke), a seemingly indestructible thug bent on avenging the murder of a hooker (James King); and Dwight (Clive Owen), a seedy gunslinger who helps Gail (Rosario Dawson) and her tough gal hookers fight a crooked cop (Benicio Del Toro) and a ruthless crime boss (Michael Clarke Duncan). Also involved are a super-human cannibal (Elijah Wood), a crooked priest (Rutger Hauer), a seedy waitress (Brittany Murphy) and a seductive serial killer (Josh Hartnett).

Sin City is pretty much a triumph of style over substance. The movie's pseudo-hardboiled dialogue is often cringeworthy, and many of the visual choices are a bit outlandish (particularly Nick Stahl's reincarnation with a big orange head). The multi-faceted, episodic story is a bit rough in construction; had Tarantino been at the helm (instead of the "guest director") he probably would have done a better job at connecting the story and constructing the plot. The characters are pretty broad, and while some are well-developed, others remained cartoons. Overall though, there's not a whole lot to complain about; with a little polish, it might have been a truly great film, but we'll settle for what he have.

Certainly the film's style is mostly a success; filmed in filtered, computer-aided black-and-white, it perfectly captures the grim, desperate feel of Miller's graphic novel, creating a wonderfully dark, hopeless and absorbing atmosphere. The driving musical score by Rodriguez, John Debney and Graeme Revell helps a great deal too. The film's portrayal of moral men trying to make their way in this completely amoral world is quite interesting; in a town like Basin City, there's no choice but to be some level of crook. Most of the characters are fairly one-dimensional, but Rodriguez and Miller make many of their dimensions interesting.

The all-star cast is mostly good. Bruce Willis conveys Hartigan's tortured mixture of morality and cynicism wonderfully. Jessica Alba, however, is one-note and wooden as Nancy, a poorly-conceived character who comes off as a drooling male fantasy. Mickey Rourke makes Marv both hilarious and pathetic; what could have been a mean thug character becomes extremely sympathetic. Clive Owen is fine if a bit colorless as Dwight, though the more showy characters in that sequence inevitably steal his thunder, particularly the gorgeous and feisty Rosario Dawson, the tart Brittany Murphy and a grimly humorous Benicio Del Toro. The supporting cast is full bursting with talent: Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile), Alexis Bledel (Tuck Everlasting), Carla Gugino (American Gangster), Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings), Josh Hartnett (O), James King (Pearl Harbor), Rutger Hauer (Batman Begins) and Powers Boothe (Tombstone) are all fine.

Despite its flaws, Sin City is still a generally well-made film and certainly worth a look. It's not the greatest film you'll ever see, but it's an interesting way to spend two hours.

Kill Bill Vol. 1

Quentin Tarantino spent 1997 to 2003 coasting on his critical reputation. By the time he came back with his two-part Kill Bill, critics were salivating over the latest work of the wunderkind who gave us Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, and Tarantino's ego had concurrently swollen to Himalayan heights. Unfortunately, due to these factors, Tarantino didn't seem compelled to make a film that continued the creative storytelling, stylish direction and clever use of filmic references that made his earlier films a treat. Instead, with Kill Bill he goes for pure cartoonish kitsch, creating a blood-spattered, nonsensical waste of time that has little appeal for anyone not a confirmed Tarantino fanboy. The critical adulation this film has garnered is beyond me; I guess some people are really just gore mavens at heart.

A mysterious woman known only as the Bride (Uma Thurman) is the only survivor of a brutal massacre at an El Paso wedding chappel. We learn quickly that she is part of the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad, a group of elite hired killers led by Bill (David Carradine), her fiancee, who double-crossed her, leaving her for dead and killing her unborn baby. Now the Bride begins a blood-soaked vendetta against Bill and his treacherous henchmen, including Tokyo mob boss O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), semi-retired Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), the one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and the fatalistic Budd (Michael Madsen).

Kill Bill is intended as a stylish homage to the '70s exploitation excrement that Tarantino so cherishes, including Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers martial arts flicks, slimeball spaghetti westerns, and (God help us) Billy Jack. Unlike his earlier works, which used these films as a touchstone for creative and original stories, Tarantino just restages scenes from said films with odd style flourishes and endless fountains of spurting blood. Kill Bill doesn't give the impression, as does, say, Jackie Brown, of a director creatively weaving homages into the fabric of a solid film; it seems like a lazy, self-indulgent director, his ego swollen to galactic proportions by critical praise and fanboy adulation, forcing us to share in his warped memories of a childhood watching schlock. But that's just me.

Tarantino's direction is fine on a technical level, with some interestingly-staged fight scenes and creative cinematography by Robert Richardson, but the movie is pretty much all action and there's no real set-up to any of the set pieces, only the faintest glimmer of plot and no drive or energy to speak of. The ridiculous amounts of fake blood, showy in-scene style changes, over-the-top, ludicrously hardboiled dialogue and non-stop action scenes may be intentionally cheesy, but that makes them no more enjoyable to me. Yeah, QT, I'm glad you've seen a lot of Shaw Brothers flicks, and that you have the soundtracks to Twisted Nerve and Death Rides a Horse on your iPod, but that just makes your film a two-hour game of Scene It. A good movie would creatively use said homages rather than throwing them at the viewer, something you once knew, but seem to have forgotten (a conclusion cemented by the similarly onanistic, if more enjoyable, Inglourious Basterds). But when you have an infinite number of fanboys and fawning critics sucking your dick, I suppose none of that matters, eh wot?

Uma Thurman does what she can with a one-dimensional part, making the Bride a force of righteous anger and making the action scenes (almost) believable. Lucy Liu gives perhaps a career-best turn as O-Ren Ishii, a character who actually is developed (largely through a lengthy anime scene) and makes a strong impression. Vivica A. Fox (is it a coincidence that the film features two of the stars of Batman and Robin? Probably, and not a very interesting one either) does well in a small role, though David Carradine, Daryl Hannah and Michael Madsen are left out to dry. Asian actors Sonny Chiba, Chiaki Kuriyama and Chia Hui Liu make an impression, and the lovely Julie Dreyfuss acquits herself well in a thankless role.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 is a load of self-indulgent excess, and excrement of the most fetid variety. It's entirely possible that Part 2 is an improvement, but I would argue that's no great achievement. Part of me can appreciate Mr. Tarantiono's engaging in showmanship for showmanship's sake, but the greater part of me wishes he'd do something genuinely worthwhile.

Inglourious Basterds

My first theatrical viewing (and review) as a Pitt junior is the much-hyped Quentin Tarantino opus, Inglourious Basterds. After years of being in development hell, Tarantino finally brought his long-cherished WWII project to the big screen. I was extremely leery going in, especially after reading the less-than-great screenplay, and most of my fears were realized. Inglourious Basterds is entertaining enough on a dumb surface level, but it's a mere trifle compared to Tarantino's best works, due to a schizophrenic tone, off-putting sadism, incoherent narrative and nonexistant characters, and surprisingly for Tarantino, a poorly-conceived, if not outright shoddy script.

"Once Upon a Time in Nazi-occupied France", Jewish girl Shoshanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent) sees her family slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), known as "the Jew Hunter", narrowly escaping death. She grows up in Paris under an assumed name, helping to run a cinema which hosts German soldiers and high officials. When she learns that Nazi bigwigs Hitler (Martin Wuttke) and Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) are planning the premier of Goebbels' latest propaganda film in her theater, she begins planning an impossibly-intricate revenge plot. Her plans intertwine with those of a gang of Jewish commandos led by sadistic American Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), who have their own plans to assassinate the Fuhrer and his cohorts. Needless to say, it leads to an explosive climax.

Inglourious Basterds is a fundamentally flawed movie in many regards, most of which stems from the awful, disjointed screenplay. Tarantino seems to be making two films; an homage to old-fashioned men-on-a-mission films like The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone, and a fairly original revenge story which pseudo-cleverly takes advantage of Tarantino's considerable film-buffery. Thus, the film's tone lurches from serious to goofy to fun to gruesomely sadistic on a scene-to-scene basis. I applaud Tarantino for his ambition - the scope and scale of this movie is far beyond anything he's attempted to date - but I can't quite credit him since neither half works very well.

The film suffers in pretty much every way. The excellent opening, with Landa interrogating a French farmer (Denis Menochet) hiding Shoshanna's family (shades of Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), works perfectly to establish mood and suspense, but other set-pieces don't fare so well, particularly the far-too-long pub scene where British special agent (Michael Fassbender) and the Basterds attempt to contact Nazi film star/double agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). Tarantino's dialogue isn't even good enough to make these scenes worth all the absurd build-up; the movie lurches from long-winded set piece to set piece with little apparent drive or reason. Character development is virtually nonexistant; only Shoshanna as any real motivation and it is simplistic as possible; the Basterds are sadistic nuts who like to kill and mutilate Nazis. Colonel Landa is all over the place, going from a cultured but sadistic Nazi to a self-serving traitor with seemingly no motivation. Michael Fassbender's film critic-turned-MI5 Agent is completely superfluous. In attempting to create a film of epic complexity, Tarantino simply creates a confused, underdeveloped, unfocused muddle. To be kind, I suppose one can say the film is never quite boring, but the inconsistency of tone and story prevents the movie from developing in any meaningful fashion.

I'm not ordinarily one to complain about violence, but something really rubs me the wrong way about the film's gleeful sadism. I should have been cheering at the climax, but the sheer nastiness of it put me off. The movie's violence is too sadistic and gruesome to work as goofy entertainment but too light-hearted and silly to work on a dramatic level; indeed, in this regard it comes close to cast member Eli Roth's shock gore films, spilling blood in gruesome ways to appease the bloodthirsty groundlings. If it weren't for Tarantino's history of creating strong female characters (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill) I might raise the misogyny flag for the particularly grisly fate of Bridget, but I suppose I should keep my middle-class white male mouth shut. In a film that knew what it was doing, I suppose these complaints wouldn't exist, but again, the movie is let down by its schizophrenic, confused tone.

On the plus side, Tarantino's direction is far more ambitious and impressive than his previous works. He shows a keen visual sense which works wonderfully, with gorgeous art direction, perfect use of camera and cinematography, and a general mastery of things technical. All of these are the sign of a great director who has matured impressively over the years; too bad it seems to have been at the expense of his once-brilliant writing skills. His use of "found" music is clever and often inspired (I loved the use of Morricone's Battle of Algiers theme in particular), with only a few odd blips - most notably the bizarre use of David Bowie's Putting Out Fire (from Cat People). On a technical score, there are no complaints.

The cast is equally schizophrenic. Melanie Laurent is disappointingly one-note as Shoshanna, but I supsect the script is the culprit for giving her a weak character. Brad Pitt is beyond awful, playing some hideous caricature redneck whose only good moments are his hilariously bad attempts at Italian. Eli Roth and Mike Myers (!) are equally obnoxious and out of place, but fortunately their roles are small. Christoph Waltz has gotten early Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Colonel Landa, and with good reason; his character is all over the place but Waltz manages to make Landa a menacing villain. Michael Fassbender, Daniel Bruhl, Til Schweiger and August Diehl do fine supporting work, but Martin Wuttke and Sylvestor Groth are predictably caricatured as Hitler and Goebbels. The real surprise of the film is Diane Kruger, the strikingly beautiful but minimally talented star of National Treasure and Troy; she does a marvelous job with what's basically an extended cameo, and one wishes more had been done with this potentially fascinating character. It's nice to see Christian Berkel (Valkyrie) and Rod Taylor (The Birds) in blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos, but it would have been nicer still if they'd had anything substantial to do. Tarantino vets Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel have pointless voice-over cameos that add nothing to the film.

I guess if you don't have any expectations from the film beyond seeing lots of Nazis die in gruesome ways, Inglourious Basterds delivers. Although it has its share of virtues, Basterds isn't a film I'm likely to come back to. If Tarantino had focused on either story individually - the Dirty Dozen homage or the Jewish girl's revenge - he could well have made a great film. By combining the two story lines into a single film, he creates a bloated, unfocused, occasionally entertaining but mostly disappointing work.

Jackie Brown

Back to Quentin Tarantino for his 1997 crime opus Jackie Brown. Many critics and viewers have (both positively and negatively) claimed that this film is somehow a departure from his previous two films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I don't see this as being the case, however. Admittedly the film is less saturated in graphic violence, pop culture references and film buff moments than Tarantino's previous efforts, and a bit more focused on characterization. However, it still maintains the style, panache, deadpan dialogue and intricate plotting of his previous films, and if it's not quite as good as Pulp Fiction, it's considerably better than Reservoir Dogs.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a middle-aged, down-on-her-luck airline stewardess who runs money to Mexico for arms dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) on the side. Jackie is arrested by the Feds for a planted stash of cocaine, and she's quickly bailed out by Ordell, who is highly suspicious of her, to say the least. Desperate to get out of trouble, Jackie, with the help of bond officer Max Cherry (Robert Forster), launches an intricate scheme to get herself out of trouble with the law and get back at Ordell in the bargain. Also involved in the plot are Louis (Robert De Niro), an ex-con friend of Ordell's, and Melanie (Bridget Fonda), Ordell's loud-mouthed, dope-smoking girlfriend, who plan a scheme of their own to swindle both Jackie and Ordell.

Jackie Brown is not so much a departure from Tarantino's earlier films as it is a much more mature version of the same. The intricate, Swiss-watch plotting is just as skillfully done as Pulp Fiction, although the story is much more focused, and the characters are, for the most part, much better-drawn. Indeed, characterization is undoubtedly the film's strong-suit: Jackie and Max at least are sympathetic, flawed and complex characters, not criminals by nature but damaged people trying to get by - hardly cool tough guys like the color crooks or Vince and Jules. The movie makes a few nods to blaxsploitation pics of the '70s (and a soundtrack full of Motown favorites) but keeps its pop culture references mostly in check; Tarantino makes the story (adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel) his own, creating a rivetting crime epic in the process. The movie may run a bit long in the tooth at 155 minutes, but it's never boring and the vagaries of the plot and characters are more than enough to keep a viewer interested for the duration.

Tarantino's cast is somewhat scaled down compared to his previous efforts, but this hardly a bad thing. Former '70s blaxploitation star Pam Grier is a revelation in the title role. Still gorgeous at 48, Grier has a great screen presence, and brings a large degree of depth, strength and weariness to Jackie, giving a career-best performance. Robert Forster, another refugee from '70s B-movies (remember Alligator?), is equally solid as her initially reluctant accomplice Max. Samuel L. Jackson is good playing his usual foul-mouthed tough guy part, and Michael Keaton is well-cast as a duplicitious police officer. On the other hand, Robert De Niro and Bridget Fonda are underused and don't contribute much to the film (their roles are hardly "crucial" as Video Hound claims), and even in a very brief role Chris Tucker is horribly annoying (at least Tarantino has the good sense to pump him full of lead at the earliest opportunity).

Although not his best work, Jackie Brown is another solid entry in Tarantino's oeuvre and comes highly recommended. However, forgive me for hesitating in plunging into the Kill Bill films for the moment.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

Pulp Fiction

So now we continue our belated excursion into the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino, a director I've either avoided or just not gotten around to watching. Reservoir Dogs was a solid if unremarkable genre pic, but Pulp Fiction is something else entirely. Although flawed in certain areas, on the whole it's deserving of all the praise it gets, for its well-constructed narrative, ensemble of (mostly) interesting characters, memorable set-pieces - and of course, it's razor-sharp dialogue.

To try and explain the plot of the movie is a bit of a burden, but we can try anyway. Vincent and Jules (John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson) are two semi-competent hitmen sent by crime boss Marcellus (Ving Rhaimes) to recover a mysterious suitcase from a gang of low-rent crooks. During the course of this Jules experiences an event which he interperets as a miracle, and a sign from God to change his life. Vincent meanwhile is assigned to take Marcellus's sexy wife Mia (Uma Thurman) out on a date, but gets into major trouble when she overdoses on cocaine. Marcellus also has to deal with Butch (Bruce Willis), a washed-up boxer who refuses to throw a fight for his boss, kills his opponent in the ring, and risks his life trying to recover a valuable gold watch. And then there's the framing device, where a would-be Bonnie and Clyde (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) attempt to rob a diner where Jules and Vince just happen to be chowing down. And that's barely half the cast list, which also involves a drug pusher and his piercing-obsessed wife (Eric Stoltz and Rosanna Arquette), a duo of rednecks (Peter Greene and Duane Whitaker) who go Deliverance on Marcellus and Butch ("Bring on the Gimp!"), an obnoxious semi-friend of Vince's with good taste in coffee (played by who else but QT himself), and a "clean-up" expert (Harvey Keitel) sent to fix one of Vince and Jules' more egregious errors.

So there's a lot going on in this film, that much is obvious. There is undoubtedly a lot of clutter going on, and the movie goes off on tangents which don't contribute a great deal to the story. Still, the narrative manages to work itself out, and Tarantino clearly establishes himself as a talent, both behind the camera and as a writer (although how much he wrote versus collaborator Roger Avery remains in dispute).

The film's non-linear plot isn't in and of itself particularly novel, but the way it's handled certainly is. Tarantino proves again that he's an exceptional writer, providing not only well-written dialogue but a clever narrative construction. Although not all of the threads tie directly together, all of these characters clearly exist in the same Universe, their temporal and physical relations aside. In particular, Butch's sequence is a marvel, a seemingly trivial incident - Butch's ditzy girlfriend leaving a prized watch behind in their apartment - building from its seeming triviality to a major set piece, Butch accidentally meeting with other characters and then leading to a gruesome denouement in Maynard's pawn shop. This is brilliant screenwriting and story construction, and if the movie had nothing else going for it, this scene would alone be worth watching it for.

That's not to say the film is perfect. On a few occasions, as with Christopher Walken's cameo (which exists solely to provide backstory) and arguably Harvey Keitel's lengthy appearance, does he get carried away, but these sequences are compelling and enjoyable in and of themselves, despite their seeming lack of function in the story. Tarantino does occasionally indulge his need for homage and movie references, but except for the dinner sequence (where they're excusable given the context) they're mostly subtle and fit into the story rather than standing out as blatant movie buff moments. The movie does stumble a bit with its ending, which for me strikes a false note, but up until that point it's a near-flawless work of narrative art, for which QT deserves the highest praise.

The cast is top-down excellent. John Travolta makes Vince a fairly likeable guy in an odd series of situations, although he doesn't have the tough edge the character probably needs. More intense is Samuel L. Jackson, who sinks his teeth into the part of the menacing and contemplative Jules. Bruce Willis gives one of his best performances as Butch, carrying the middle third of the film perfectly. Ving Rhaimes' Marcellus ("I'm gonna go medeval on your ass!") is a wonderfully menacing bad guy. Uma Thurman is sexy and extraordinarily charming as Mia, and one almost wishes she had more to do. Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel give scene-stealing cameo appearances which makes their seeming superfluity easy to overlook. Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer are rather wasted and Tarantino is rather annoying in his little part, but they're the minority.

Pulp Fiction is simply a marvel, a wonderful piece of pop art that has stood the test of time. I'm leery about diving further into Tarantino's body of work, and the upcoming Inglorious Basterds looks like shit (judging from the trailer, previews and the screenplay), but even if I never enjoy another QT film I'll at least have this one to come back to.

Rating: 8/10 - Highly Recommended

Reservoir Dogs

Yes, after twenty years and three months of life I have finally seen a Quentin Tarantino film! I'd never had any great interest in doing so but for the sake of cinematic completeness (and the tiniest dose of film buff street cred) I made a sojourn to the Hillman tonight and took in his first feature film, Reservoir Dogs. At the very least, I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time in doing so.

Veteran crook Joe Cabot (Laurence Tierney) and his son Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) assemble a gang of professional thieves to pull off a diamond heist - one of whom happens to be an undercover cop. The heist goes horribly wrong, leading to a bloody police ambush. The survivors - harried and frantic Mr. Pink (Steve Buschemi), gutshot Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), frazzled tough guy Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), and the psychotic Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) - come together in a garage, trying to figure out who ratted them out and what they should do as the cops close in. That's a pretty short plot description, but it's all you really need.

Reservoir Dogs succeeds mostly because it's simple and to the point. It's a lean story that makes the most of its 100 minutes. It owes a great deal to Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, in its straightforward depiction of a heist gone wrong, its use of flashback and real-time, and its gang of immoral, traitorous crooks. There isn't a lot of excessive meat on the bones, the few subplots related to the characters. All in all, it's a simple story told simply, and executed very well by Tarantino, showing a large degree of restraint, its references to other films and pop culture mostly limited and only a few moments of showiness.

The biggest flaw is that the movie is rather cold and distant. None of these guys are really likeable or overly interesting, and so it's hard to get very involved in their story. Mr. Orange is the only truly sympathetic character - he's the cop, and he spends most of the movie in a pool of his own blood - unless you count Kirk Baltz's hapless cop who becomes a hostage to the psychopathic Mr. Blonde. As such, the movie is detached and a bit distant; it's done well, it's just not overly involving, and I can't see it holding up well to rewatches. Its simpleness is what makes it work, but it's also (to a smaller degree) a detriment.

Quentin Tarantino's direction is rather restrained; he allows the actors and script to do most of the footwork and has only a few indulgent "I'm a DIRECTOR!" moments (the rotating shots around the breakfast table at the beginning) which show a restraint that, I'm told, he would largely abandon in his later works. The action scenes are pretty straight-forward although QT piles on the blood and squibs when people do get hurt. Tarantino's scripting is tight and well-executed; he has a good sense of pacing definitely shows an ear for small-talk and dialogue although some of the conversations go a bit over-the-top. The tough guy ensemble cast is good, with Harvey Keitel's nice guy Mr. White and Steve Buschemi's frantic Mr. Pink standing out.

Reservoir Dogs is a pretty good movie, but it's not great by any means; well-done but not overly memorable. It didn't convince me that I need to go out of my way to see any more of Tarantino's work, but I'm at least open to the idea.

Rating: 7/10 - Recommended