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Pulp Fiction — 30th Anniversary 4K

by Glenn Erickson Dec 10, 2024

How soon will it be before Quentin Tarantino’s films are considered ‘old man’s movies?’  This time-twisted hit man tale made a big dent in film culture back when The Lion King and Forrest Gump were the biggest hits of the year. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson’s hit men, Uma Thurman’s coked-up party girl, Bruce Willis’ cagey Palooka, Ving Rhames’ gangster and Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth’s lovebird stickup artists have all become indelible icons; Tarantino’s storytelling style inspired a hundred copycats. The 30th Anniversary release has no shortage of extras, Daddy-O.


Pulp Fiction 30th Anniversary 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital
Paramount Home Entertainment
1994 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 154 min. / Street Date December 3, 2024 / Available from Amazon / 74.99
Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Angela Jones, Stephen Hibbert, Quentin Tarantino, Frank Whaley, Julia Sweeney.
Cinematography: Andrzej Sekula
Production Designer: David Wasco
Art Director: Charles Collum
Film Editor: Sally Menke
Costumes: Betsy Heimann
From stories by Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino
Executive producers, Co-producers Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, Danny DeVito, Richard N. Gladstein, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher
Produced by Lawrence Bender
Written and Directed by
Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino’s mega-breakthrough 1994 hit was simply the coolest thing on the planet. Those in the know had pegged the writer-director as genius material with  Reservoir Dogs.  Tony Scott’s  True Romance had its good points, but mainly proved that Tarantino’s writing ‘voice’ was strong enough to cut through another filmmaker’s revisions. The less said the better about Oliver Stone’s  Natural Born Killers, a movie designed to shock and repel and little else.

The epic-length crime ‘meditation’ Pulp Fiction transcended the audience for gory crime, winning the attention of cinema movers and shakers world-wide. In plain language, feature filmmaking with an author’s voice was in a slump, but Tarantino’s Grindhouse-crime-art hybrid came across as something important. The college crowd loved it — the tone is sharp and funny, and its extreme scenes make sense. QT’s genuinely edgy, challenging style was easily distinguishable from ordinary fare. He was capable of putting exactly what he wanted on the screen.

In those dark days before streaming, Blu-rays and even DVDs, Pulp Fiction captured the imagination of the L.A.- based film industry. Early in 1994 I was working all night at a video dub house, when a flat film-chain transfer of Pulp Fiction was being duplicated. The shop practically shut down, as twenty techs gathered around a single 19″ monitor to get a glimpse of the highly anticipated picture.

 

Tarantino’s movies weren’t what one would expect from a former video store clerk. He wasn’t some crazy rebel, but an old-fashioned auteurist who was already building a group of loyal creative contributors. Co-writer Roger Avary had assisted on Reservoir Dogs, along with QT’s ace editrix Sally Menke, producers Lawrence Bender & Richard N. Gladstein, cinematographer Andrzej Sekula, & costumer Betsy Heimann.

The new director handled his publicity well, deflecting ‘genius’ talk. When over-eager critics compared him to Orson Welles, he steered the subject back to his beloved down-market grindhouse cinema. The town had noted the way Reservoir Dogs had made Tim Roth and other actors a household word. His full house of committed performer-collaborators began with Harvey Keitel, who had been instrumental in getting Dogs launched as a full-fledged production. Samuel L. Jackson didn’t make the cut for Reservoir. After twenty years of acting ups and downs, he came into his own in Pulp Fiction.

Tarantino had the luxury of tailoring his characters for specific talent. Every role is a plum part, and too interesting to be dismissed as a showoff bid for a supporting Oscar. When Christopher Walken takes center stage, all attention is on his ‘inspirational’ lecture to the son of a Vietnam Veteran. Samuel L. Jackson’s quasi-Biblical oratory provides the film with its strongest scenes. His bombast is intelligent, authoritative, and scary — even more intimidating than Tarantino’s gallery of vicious killers in Reservoir Dogs.

The assassins Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega (Jackson & John Travolta) carry on a tradition of ‘mated’ hit men, known only to devotees of classic crime noir. The notion may have begun way back in Joseph H. Lewis’s 1955 The Big Combo. Its fearsome killers Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef are a doting domestic couple, the exact opposite of Charles McGraw and William Conrad in The Killers.

But Jules and Vincent are aggressively straight. Their hilariously mundane conversation convinced America’s action film devotees that good dialogue actually makes a difference — their speeches veer between Shakesperian oratory and the best of sitcom bandinage, with a streak of 100-proof profanity that would stop grandma’s heart dead cold.

 

Bruce Willis was no longer quite the hot superstar he had been in 1990, and he was smart enough to know that a good part in Tarantino’s ensemble was too cool to pass up. His role is like a spiritual rebirth for 101 movies about boxers on the losing downgrade, the kind that are always pressed to Throw The Big Fight. Willis’s Butch Coolidge gets on the kill list of the fearful gangster Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), but redeems himself through a harrowing ordeal-by-torture. Butch may be the film’s only winner — earning a ‘get out of jail’ card. His snappy exit with Maria de Medeiros is worthy of a Marlon Brando character from the 1950s.

Ving Rhames’ Marcellus is the common thread between the stories, a gangster so fearful nobody dares offend him. Jules and Vincent never forget that fact, which makes Vincent’s screwy ‘date assignment’ with Marcellus’s wife Mia (Uma Thurman) all the funnier. She wants a fun night out, and Vincent is delegated to entertain her. He’s in double jeopardy — if the frisky Mia tries to seduce him, he’s cooked. Mia is also a sneaky cokehead. Keeping her away from drugs may be impossible.

 

“Don’t be a square, Daddy-O.”

 

The risky date becomes a delightul episode at the ultimate ’50s retro nightclub, Jack Rabbit Slim’s. Vincent and Mia’s spin on the dance floor is one for the ages. Even slightly overweight, Travolta nails it — it’s impossible not to admire his wicked Batusi. Nobody taps pop culture associations with as much finesse as Tarantino. By 1994 Batman’s dance was no longer part of our active vocabulary, yet we recognized it immediately. Nostalgia is entirely subjective. Explaining such things never had the desired effect on my grown children:  ‘Do you think Dad is losing it?

To be kind, John Travolta had never been a favorite actor, but he’s at his best here. The early ’90s were not good for John — his previous roles were in an installment of the Look Who’s Talking series, and a cameo in  Boris and Natasha. Vince Vega reignited Travolta’s career for the third time, like a cat with multiple lives.

 

Uma Thurman had first knocked us silly as the goddess Venus (in the half-shell) in the glorious  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. She and Travolta would occupy a respected perch for a decade more. The party would last until the awful  Get Shorty sequel  Be Cool (2005).

Quentin Tarantino made most of his films for Miramax and the discredited Harvey Weinstein. That the Weinstein scandals didn’t damage Tarantino, it’s because his focus was on filmmaking, not a decadent Hollywood lifestyle. Interestingly, his movie odes to his beloved ’70s trash cinema left out most of the graphic exploitation associated with the subgenre. The uglier excesses are mostly limited to dialogue — the profanity and ethnic slurs. Tarantino’s films are especially respectful of women. Even the supporting female characters have strong personalities, like Roseanna Arquette’s Jody. The women may not always be well treated, but they are never humiliated for cheap laughs or girlie nudity. The stories are never sexist. When somebody gets raped in Pulp Fiction, it’s a guy.

Tarantino didn’t betray the trust of his actors, as did Dennis Hopper with his uncouth treatment of  Jodie Foster. QT constructed his next picture around cult actress  Pam Grier, who hadn’t been a star since the ’70s and blaxploitation. QT gave her first billing in his adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, in a cast with Michael Keaton and Robert De Niro in 5th and 6th place. Pam Grier keeps her clothes on and her dignity intact.

 

The order in which we learn things can make all the difference in a story.

 

Pulp Fiction re-orders the time sequence of its story, intentionally keeping us off balance. It’s not an impenetrable puzzle, but a teasing, challenging shuffle that enhances our appreciation of events, like Stanley Kubrick’s obsessively repetitive time games in  The Killing. In Reservoir Dogs Tarantino broke up a straight narrative to introduce suspense elements, dodging around a central heist that we never actually see. Pulp Fiction’s stickup lovebirds Pumpkin and Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) open the picture with a breathtaking prologue, and then don’t return until the finale. Far too arresting to forget, they provide a sort of existential suspense — how do they fit in?  When will we see them again?

We’re surprised at how well Pulp Fiction’s jumbled sequencing ‘makes sense’: everybody understands one jarring time disconnect, thanks to the obvious hint of Jules & Vincent’s ‘dork’ costuming in T-shirts and athletic shorts. One sequence depicts the murder of a man reading Modesty Blaise while on the john. He then pops up later, alive and well. But we trust Tarantino to play fair with these games. We feel assured that all will be revealed later.

Tarantino’s show sparked a trend of thrillers that jazz up otherwise ordinary stories with complicated narrative puzzles, hoping to add exitement where there is none. Overly clever plotting too easily becomes an exercise in withholding information, frustrating the audience. For Pulp Fiction and several subsequent pictures, Tarantino’s success with these games was unbeatable. ‘Having no idea what will happen next’ is a good thing, when what happens next delivers an extra thrill.

We finish Pulp Fiction with a weird positive vibe, delivered by Jackson’s Jules Winnfield. We were ready for an immediate sequel in which Jules wanders the Earth as the last righteous man, to dispense wisdom and justice. Jules is like an origin story for a good version of the TV show Kung-Fu.

 


 

Paramount Home Video’s 30th Anniversary 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital presentation of Pulp Fiction appears to be a deluxe reissue of a Steelbook 4K release from two years ago. The show of course looks incredible in 4K, the bigger the screen the better. Tarantino’s razor-keen banter still keeps us at attention. We’re perpetually off-balance, yet when one takes the film apart, it boils down to 9 or 10 traditional scenes, most of which could be played as theatrical one-acts. QT pulls us in with intriguing interactions, just as might a 1930s dramaturge like Samuel Raphaelson.

The extras on the second Blu-ray disc appear to be identical to what was offered on the older Steelbook 4K + Blu-ray … and might be the same pressing. Most seem to have originated with an older 2011 Blu-ray. They’re excellent, and listed in full below. When Tarantino appears he’s always reasonable — even his Cannes acceptance speech is heartfelt.

The 30th Anniversary presentation makes for a nice gift package. A mostly-black heavy outer sleeve contains a folding sleeve (pictured right) with original poster art and a little pop-up diorama of the dance exhibition at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. The keep case inside has the 4K, the Blu and the digital download code. Another card envelope holds some colorful mini lobby card reproductions, a sheet of stickers, and a card with images from a still man’s contact sheet.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson


Pulp Fiction 30th Anniversary 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Not the Usual Mindless Boring Getting to Know You Chit Chat 40-minute cast and crew making of docu
Here are Some Facts on the Fiction 21-minute critical round-up
Pulp Fiction: The Facts 31-minute older making of interview documentary
Deleted Scenes, 25 minutes with Tarantino introduction
Two “Behind the Scenes Montages”
Production Design Featurette
Siskel & Ebert At the Movies: The Tarantino Generation TV excerpt
Independent Spirit Awards interview: Tarantino with Michael Moore
Tarantino’s Palme D’Or Acceptance Speech at Cannes
Charlie Rose Show one-hour Tarantino interview
Galleries: Five international trailers, ten + TV spots, poster, etc..
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed:
November 6, 2024
(7241pulp)
CINESAVANT

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Text © Copyright 2024 Glenn Erickson

About Glenn Erickson

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Glenn Erickson left a small town for UCLA film school, where his spooky student movie about a haunted window landed him a job on the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS effects crew. He’s a writer and a film editor experienced in features, TV commercials, Cannon movie trailers, special montages and disc docus. But he’s most proud of finding the lost ending for a famous film noir, that few people knew was missing. Glenn is grateful for Trailers From Hell’s generous offer of a guest reviewing haven for CineSavant.

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Christopher Howard

Great review, Glenn! Pulp Fiction, yeah, baby I took my date to see it in New York City when it first showed in 1994. Good year for movies I think.

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