Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction (1994) is one of the films that changed how cinema uses narrative order, and it treats that as an idea rather than a trick. There are three stories: a job carried out by two hitmen, an evening spent with the boss's wife, and a boxer who refuses to throw a fight. All three touch, and the film does not present them in chronological order. The result is that you see a character alive again after his death, and the scene now means something else. What Tarantino actually does is cut away from the action and fill the gaps. The most quoted passages are the ones where nobody draws a gun: a conversation about hamburgers, a dance contest, an argument in a car. The violence is always sudden and always brief. What is inside the briefcase is never shown and Tarantino refused to explain it. It is a hole left for the audience to fill. John Travolta's career was at its lowest point and this film brought him back. It was made for around eight million dollars and took over two hundred million. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1994 and is treated as the turning point where independent cinema opened into the mainstream. It runs 154 minutes. Good for: crime films, nineties cinema, and films that think about structure. Less good for: the violence is sudden and graphic, the drug scenes are hard, there is a rape, and racial slurs are used throughout.