Pulp Fiction (1994)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson

The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

We (thankfully) all view movies very differently and have our own perceptions and opinions. Fact remains, when we watch a movie, we want to be entertained. Take this highly acclaimed, multi-award winning movie for instance: I hated it. I know I’m in the vast minority here, but I was not entertained and I couldn’t wait for the credits to roll. My main issue with ‘Pulp Fiction’ is WHAT THE BLOODY HELL WAS IT ABOUT???

The film plays like an anthology, but its not. It plays like a non-linear film, but its not entirely. The scenes are just scrambled to confuse the hell out of the viewer, and hoping for it to all make sense in the end. To a certain extent (but not entirely) it did link up in the end when the opening scene connected with the ending, but to sit through 154 minutes watching a bunch of dysfunctional characters with questionable actions just for the final 10 minutes to serve as conclusion, is not my idea of being entertained.

Ok, so what was the movie about? That’s the thing; I just don’t know! It was about drugs, that I do know. Plenty of it. So, its about doing drugs, smoking and (senseless) chit-chatting…did I miss something? What’s the story? Some scenes were so dragged out; if you were to get up and pour yourself a drink, you wouldn’t miss a darn thing. There was nothing to miss. There was so much dialogue in this movie, you could easily do whatever you wanted to and just listen to the movie – like a radio show. Ask me in a month what the movie is about and I’d probably have forgotten that I’ve actually watched it! Yawn, yawn, yawn… This highly acclaimed movie bored me to death.

I suppose the antagonist was Marsellus, but its hard to tell. There are no protagonists and no-one I rooted for. I didn’t care about any of the characters. My favourite character – if I had to pick one – was Jules Winnfield, played by Samuel L Jackson. Of all the actors I could understand him the best (and I don’t mean his character actions, I mean I could clearly HEAR what he was saying), and he saved the day in the end, so yeah, he was my favourite.

The film’s narrative might be described as ‘unique’, but I found it confusing as hell and completely unnecessary. And why do Quentin Tarantino insist on throwing around the ‘nigger’ word in his films as much as he does? I hate that! I could barely sit through this. The all-star cast couldn’t even save it for me – not even Bruce Willis (although it was nice seeing him in ALL his glory!!)

‘Pulp Fiction’ earned nearly $214 million on a small budget of only $8 million (Why??? I seriously missed something!). The film received 141 award nominations, winning 69 including an Oscar for Best Screenplay. It also received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, and Best Editing. (Ok, I definitely missed something here…!)

Would I watch it again? No. No. No. And no.