I am sure that most people who went to see Pulp Fiction had probably seen Reservoir Dogs first. I didn’t. I did see it after seeing Pulp Fiction and out of all of Quentin Tarantino’s films, the one i like the most is Pulp Fiction, much more so than Dogs or to be honest any of the stuff he has done later.
I love the storytelling approach that Tarantino takes with Pulp Fiction, it was extremely clever to intertwine the various stories in the way that he does. What I think was innovative was the way that the stories don’t follow a linear path. Before Pulp Fiction this would have been done through the flashback, what Tarantino does is to just tell the stories and ignores the fact that the stories aren’t told in order or in a linear fashion. This could be somewhat confusing, and in many ways a second viewing does help, but due to though the stories intertwine they are really individual isolated stories.
Pulp Fiction doesn’t hold back the punches, there is violence, there are drugs. This does however make it a very powerful film and at times uncomfortable to watch. I certainly feel that it doesn’t glorify the use of drugs, or even violence, it is shocking and I think it works well on that level.
In terms of cast, it is full of stars. At the time many of them were on a downward track, this is the film that helped many of them to be reinvented or refreshed.
Another facet I like about Pulp Fiction has to be the soundtrack and I suspect that this was a contributing factor to the success of the film.