Pulp Fiction (1994)

Let me be upfront about something before we go any further: Pulp Fiction genuinely changed how I looked at pot-bellies on women. I'm not explaining that any further. Just know it happened, and move on.

Right. Now that's out of the way. For a long time, this was untouchable for me. Top ten all-time. Five stars, no hesitation, no debate. Era-defining. A masterpiece full stop. And honestly? It still kind of is. But after countless re-watches spread across my entire adult life, something has quietly shifted in how I see it, and I think it's worth being honest about that.

Pulp Fiction isn't really a perfectly constructed narrative. What it is, is a series of iconic, endlessly quotable, meme-worthy moments strung together with extraordinary style and an awful lot of nerve. The non-linear structure felt revolutionary when it landed, and it still does on some level. But the more I watch it, the more I notice that the structure isn't doing the heavy lifting of a plot so much as it's giving Tarantino permission to flit between set pieces without having to worry too much about momentum or consequence.

And look, those set pieces are phenomenal. The Royale with Cheese debate. Jules' biblical execution monologue, delivered with such controlled intensity that it still stops the room dead. Vincent Vega doing his stiff, awkward twist at Jack Rabbit Slim's while Mia Wallace watches on, the two of them radiating the specific tension of people who absolutely should not be alone together. The adrenaline shot to the chest. Butch's whole gold watch saga, and Zed's deeply unpleasant afternoon. Every single one of those sequences is extraordinary. The dialogue especially, and I genuinely don't know how anyone sits down and writes like that. The soundtrack, as always with Tarantino, is completely flawless.

But here's where I'll ruffle a few feathers. When I stack Pulp Fiction up against Django Unchained, I have to be straight with you: I think Tarantino evolved. Django has stronger emotional weight, tighter pacing, and a central character arc that actually takes you somewhere. Pulp Fiction is, and I mean this affectionately, a collection of ridiculously cool vignettes. It's an anthology dressed up as a film. I used to think that was incidental. Now I think it's the whole deal.

That said, I've also spent time with the rest of his catalogue, and Pulp Fiction still holds its own. I've written about Reservoir Dogs before, and you can see the DNA there, the sharp dialogue, the non-linear tricks, the cool-as-ice surface tension. But Pulp Fiction is where everything clicked at a scale nobody was ready for. It didn't just announce Tarantino. It rewired what people thought a film could do and sound like and feel like. And I think Jackie Brown, the film that followed it, is actually underrated precisely because it came in the wake of something this seismic.

What Pulp Fiction does better than almost anything else is refuse to age. I'm watching it nearly thirty years after it came out, and it still feels alive in a way that most films from that era simply don't. The dialogue crackles. The performances are electric. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman. All of them at some kind of peak. You'd never know, watching it fresh, that this wasn't made last year.

So where does that leave me? Four and a half stars. Not the perfect five I'd have given it at seventeen, and I think that's the honest call. It's a brilliant, genre-defining, culture-shifting piece of work. It's also a film that's more interested in being cool than in being complete, and with enough distance, you can feel that. It doesn't stop it being one of the greatest films ever made. It just means I've stopped pretending it's something slightly different to what it actually is.

A film that changed cinema forever and still refuses to age. Even if it's just barely edged out by some of Tarantino's later work in my personal ranking, Pulp Fiction isn't going anywhere near the bottom of that list. Four and a half stars.

Rating: ★★★★½  | Year: 1994  | Watched: 2025-04-02

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) · Inglourious Basterds (2009) · Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) · Reservoir Dogs (1992)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)