Word: pulp
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That's the dilemma that's been facing Quentin Tarantino, whose 1994 Pulp Fiction jabbed a spike into the art of film noir and established him as a big kahuna in Hollywood. But instead of writing another original screenplay, Tarantino has staked his reputation on a different approach: he has acquired rights to a best-selling crime novel from the hot author of Get Shorty and adapted it around the retro-hip personae of the ultimate 1970s blaxploitation babe, Pam Grier...
...Like Pulp Fiction and his 1992 debut, Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino's latest film is populated with jive-talking killers and other lowlifes. The plot revolves around a streetwise flight attendant, played by Grier, who double- and triple-crosses a gun dealer (Samuel L. Jackson) despite interference from an ex-con (Robert De Niro) and a stoned-out beach bunny (Bridget Fonda) who bounces between the two men. Filled with Tarantino-lingo overkill (the N word is reportedly used 10 times in the first scene alone), the film mixes ultra-violence with the director's usual pop-culture references...
...goes well, not at Tarantino's. The director made numerous stumbles in the wake of Pulp Fiction, including an embarrassing guest-host gig on Saturday Night Live, a series of awkward acting efforts, and participation in the flop 1995 anthology Four Rooms. Although the 1996 horror flick From Dusk Till Dawn (directed by pal Robert Rodriguez), which Tarantino wrote, produced and appeared in, was a moderate hit, speculation whirled in the industry about whether his directing career had stalled. Miramax provided a jump start by buying the rights to four Leonard novels...
Back in Hollywood, Tarantino supporters are doing their part to soften expectations. "Pulp Fiction's cultural resonance may never be duplicated," says indie-film booster and International Creative Management agent Robert Newman, "but can people still have a marvelous time at a Quentin Tarantino movie? Why not? It's like saying the Rolling Stones did Sympathy for the Devil, so they can't do anything as groundbreaking again." As the Stones and Tarantino both might say, let it bleed...
...course, is only the beginning of a story that quickly spins out of Nelson's and, eventually, everyone else's control, except for the author's, who narrates this trajectory of calamities with noteworthy energy and skill. And Johnson is obviously aiming for something more here than standard-issue pulp-fiction chills. In their reflective moments his whacked-out villains have a tendency to quote Nietzsche, as if to explain themselves to themselves and the reader. But Johnson does not make clear where, among so many burned-out characters, the reader's rooting interests should lie. Nelson seems a poor...