PULP FICTION (1994)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Writers: Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary

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

Runtime: 154 minutes

Plot: The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

Review: The movie is an amalgam of three stories, but the characters are overlapped in the ingenious, lapidary style of Robert Altman. It's really one big story — a pulp symphony in three movements. (Tarantino even goes Altman one better: He overlaps the time frame.) The first section, which centers on Vincent and Mia's night out, also features Vincent's partner, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). The two thugs entertain themselves by engaging in rapid-fire combative exchanges on every subject from McDonald's restaurants in Paris to the relative cleanliness of pigs and dogs. Watching Pulp Fiction, you don't just get engrossed in what's happening on screen. You get intoxicated by it — high on the rediscovery of how pleasurable a movie can be. For 2 hours and 35 minutes, you are drawn into the lives of violently impassioned underworld characters — hit men, drug dealers, lethal vamps — who become figments of fury and grace and desire.

Pulp Fiction's greatness comes from its marriage of vividly original characters with a series of vivid and half-fanciful events and from the dialogue, which makes this a must watch for all.

Reviewed by S.M. Intisab Shahriyar