Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. You don’t live in the dorms for any stretch of the mid-2000s without taking in all of the Tarantino library.
Did I Like It: This is probably the Tarantino film I’m least inclined to re-visit, but I think I’ve spent more than a few years being unfair in that regard. My memory of the film is that it was always a bit simplistic. That isn’t necessarily a mark against the film. Given the resources Tarantino was working with, the film didn’t really have any hope of being more of a prototype for what Tarantino would eventually have in store for us.
The film is infinitely more complex than my memory gave it credit. Tarantino introduces himself to the movie-going world with the same kind of unhinged, borderline-bonkers plot construction he would later perfect* in Pulp Fiction (1994).
You may be like me and mostly remember the opening diner scene where the characters disassemble Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” or the torture scene complete with a needle drop of “Stuck in the Middle with You.” But the entire story keeps its secrets from us for as long as it wants to, and not a second longer, and only reveals them not when the flow of the ill-fated heist demands it, but when it will mean the most to us in our journey with the characters.
You might be like some of the critics of the age who are irretrievably turned off by the use of language and the violence. The immediate answer to those complaints is that you’re likely to have a devil of a time with the rest of Tarantino’s films, but I would add on to say that every line of dialogue is built to reveal character, even when those characters are helplessly awful. As far as the violence is concerned, I suppose I understand the complaints about violence in Tarantino’s films, but whereas light PG-13 depict violence as bloodless, barely notable events, it is difficult to say that Tarantino treats his violence blithely. Every drop of blood is bled from wounds that hurt, and that means more than finding a character amidst a maelstrom of bullets and blades only to come out with a scratch.
*And subsequently abandon, It’s a little disappointing that Tarantino never really continued his experiments with non-linear narratives, but then one supposes that if you start experimenting, and then perfect it in the next outing, are there really any experiments left to do?