Pulp Fiction

Titles. Loud music. Scratch; a new groove on the soundtrack. Cut. A couple of shabby robbers are planning their next job in the shadow of the large blinds. Next scene; two different thugs, real hitmen with bulging suits, unload their trunk and grumble about the lack of sturdy tools. Going up the stairs they talk of this and that, and then they make their move, a regular execution with threats, long speeches and lots of bullet holes. The younger one, Vincent Vega, visits his dealer and does some shopping. Afterwards he picks up the boss' wife and takes her to a restaurant. Does he fall in love? Is he disloyal? Unexpected things happen before he finds the answer to that question.

A boxer who is going to the dogs rips off his employer, skips town, however he lost something - his dad's watch, left at the abandoned home-address. Chaos ensues, but when the boxer and the boss have villains even worse than them bursting in on them in the middle of a scene there are some interesting rearrangements in the schedule.

From there onwards the episodes are tied together. We find out what happened after Vincent's and Jules' early morning 'hit' and how the to inept robbers from the beginning of the film are bypassed during their lives most ambitious robbery. We also find out about Jules's longing to become a good person.

`How will you make a living if you don't have a job?' Vincent asks. The question is how will he get along, but he hasn't thought of that himself yet.

By this time everybody has forgotten what it was in the bag that seemed so important at the beginning since you keep longing for a catharsis, however tacky. Quentin Tarantino skips cheap shots and treats the subject with honourable grandeur; the lack of good machine guns may be a problem to his villains, but this does not dim the view when it comes to chosing a way on life's long and winding road, choices that become clear mainly through the many and confused conversations.

Watching John Travolta as Vincent, hitting the dance floor again is infinitely enjoyable. Quite a few action movies work without translation, which is one of their strengths outside the US. Pulp Fiction combines a kind of drama on a high and nostalgic references with action scenes that gives you hiccups. But that is not what really gets to you in the end, it is the unorthodox moral lectures.
ANNE HEDÈN

Medverkande
John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Eric Stoltz, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Christopher Walken, Maria De Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Peter Greene, Frank Whaley, Alexis Arquette, Angela Jones: Producent
Lawrence Bender: Manus
Quentin Tarantino: Foto
Andrzej Sekula: Musik
Karyn Rachtman (Music supervisor): Talat språk
English