The Redemption Of Pulp

The miracle of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is how, being composed of secondhand, debased parts, it succeeds in gleaming like something new. For a long time we've seen young, movie-mad American directors sink their teeth knowingly into old Hollywood genres.

When it works, we call it postmodernism; when it doesn't, it's vampirism. Tarantino, who educated himself working in a video store, is no exception. His movies-"Reservoir Dogs" and this Cannes grand-prize winner--are virtuosic reflections of reflections, B-movie archetypes respun with an art-house veneer by a guy equally conversant in Douglas Sirk, Sergio Leone and Jean-Luc Godard. But by the time this writer-director has finished twisting the cliches of the genre, he's turned Silly Putty into major architecture.

Set in today's L.A., but taking its spirit from '40s pulp magazines like Black Mask, this structurally audacious, 2 1/2-hour movie unfolds separate but overlapping stories that start, stop and jump about in time. Yet by the end the jumbled chronology falls into perfect, startling place. The stories start from pulp ground zero. Two hit men, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta), are sent to retrieve a stolen briefcase by their boss (Ving Rhames) ... Vincent plays escort to the mobster's wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), knowing her husband once threw a man out a window for giving her a foot massage ... A boxer named Butch (Bruce Willis) is supposed to take a dive. He double-crosses the boss, takes the money and runs ...

We've seen these situations a thousand times -- but not where this movie takes them. It's not just the plot twists that surprise, or the startling outbursts of violence, or the deft way that the most grisly scene can explode into black humor. This is one crime movie that revels in the quotidian details of character. "Pulp Fiction's" distinctive dialogue is a profane, hilarious amalgam of banality and formality. Tarantino relishes the small talk these pros exchange before they pull out their guns ("Do you know what a Quarter Pounder is called in Amsterdam?" the dim, charming Vincent asks his partner. "A Royale with cheese"). Tarantino shows us the before and after of violence: how to cope with the bloody mess of a man you have accidentally killed in the back seat of your car. The horrifically funny climax of Vincent's evening with Mia earns its power from the leisurely buildup of the date, which treats us to the memorable sight of Travolta and Thurman twisting on the dance floor of a '50s theme restaurant. Tarantino's unsentimental world has little use for conventional ideas of good guys and bad. No one is untarnished, but each of the main characters is granted a second chance--a shot at redemption. How they cope with that opportunity is what the movie is about.

Occasionally, Tarantino stumbles. There are smashing moments in the wild tale about Butch (Willis is very fine), hut the domestic scenes between him and his girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros) are dull. And its gaudy climax--sadistic rednecks, S&M and male rape-traffics in Gothic cliches that the rest of the movie mocks. It's the only time Tarantino indulges in unadulterated villainy, and it's a failure of imagination, a movie kid's borrowed notion of evil.

The spectacular cast includes Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer as nervous stickup artists who call each other Pumpkin and Honey Bunny; Christopher Walker delivering an outrageous aria that explains how Butch came by his cherished gold watch, and Harvey Keitel as The Wolf, the meticulous mobster cleanup man. But the riveting Jackson, as the Bible-quoting Jules, and the beguiling Travolta, as heroin-shooting Vincent, must take pride of place. These guys pop off the screen into scumbag legend. Just when you thought the last thing the world needed was another violent, self-conscious, hipster hommage to film noir, along comes Tarantino to blow away your deja vu.