Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 50

FILM A bloody 'Pulp' Director goes for the jugular once again in 'Pulp Fiction' fo" 'St 'IP if J- ri) iJ? A Quentin Tarantino, right, was the perfect director to give John Travolta's career a shot in the arm. Review by Marylynn Uricchio Post-Gazette Film Critic Quentin Tarantino believes in centerpieces. Not the flowery kind that grace a dining table, but a key scene in a movie that will leave the audience stunned, shocked, maybe even sickened. In "Reservoir Dogs" it was the memorable ear-cutting scene, a slow, torturous dance of violence that was excruciating to watch. He tops that in "Pulp Fiction" with a hypodermic needle that looks about a foot long.

Tarantino movies are not for the squeamish, yet they exert a lurid fascination that's impossible to resist. "Pulp Fiction" won best picture at this year's Cannes film festival, but odds are good it won't do the same at the Oscars. It has a thoroughly European sensibility, which is surprising because it's such an American film. The characters could exist in no other country, and neither could the situations in which Tarantino places them. The difference can be summed up in one word: Morality.

Americans make moral judgments about a film, and Tarantino gets a lot of flack for showing no remorse. His violence is direct, unflinching, and it flows so effortlessly from the action that it seems a natural state of affairs. What's most disturbing is that he does, indeed, have his finger on the pulse of this nation. We. just don't want to recognize that.

In "Pulp Fiction," writer and director Tarantino takes an assortment of classic crime genre characters and intertwines them with three stories that are right out of, well, pulp fiction: the gangster who is assigned to take out the boss' seductive wife and knows that if he touches her, he risks death; the boxer who agrees to take a dive, and then changes his mind in the ring when pride interferes with his bargain; The Wolf a cool professional who comes along to clean up the evidence after a particularly bloody accidental killing. What sets "Pulp Fiction" apart and makes it a brilliant romp through the netherworld is Taran-tino's utterly unique vision. He's far more interested in the moment after than in the moment. Traditionally, movies cut away after the action. A guy is shot, then it's on to the next scene.

But Tarantino lingers. He imagines what happens after you shoot somebody. How does someone feel? What do they talk about? How do they make the transition from killing to an otherwise routine day? What do they eat for breakfast? Tarantino's biggest strength is his dialogue. Fresh, funny and often existential, he can devote whole scenes to conversations that ordinarily find no place in the movies. His writing is leisurely in a literary way.

It doesn't so much advance the plot as give us a real feel for the characters. No wonder actors love to be in his movies, even though "Pulp Fiction" is only the second he has directed (he wrote the story for "Natural Born Killers" and the screenplay for "True John Travolta, in the best performance of his career, is simply Quentin strikes again Tarantino is like a kid with a camera RESERVOIR PUPS With Quentin Tarantino mania sweeping the country, you can expectto hear from the director's "Reservoir Puppies" before the decade is over. Meanwhile, there's some "Tarantino-esque" material already in the can: "Killing Roger Avary's explosive tale of a bungled French bank heist contains all the requisite sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll and lots and lots of people getting blown away. The film rates coolenough for some, but the appalling, noisy violence is simply celebrated without circumspection or a consistent sense of humor. "Love and a A not-yet-released film (still on the film-festival rounds) by CM.

Talking-ton, this Texas-made tale of lovers on the lam echoes the exploits of Mickey and Mallory in "Natural Born Killers" as well as Clarence and Alabama in "True Romance." Comparisons aside, this one should stand tall on its own. "Bottle Tarantino says he loved the short film made by Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson. The piece involves petty crime and a good balance of weird conversation. The young filmmakers, however, were making their film at the same time Tarantino was doing "Dogs." So don't call them copycats. Film-fest fare only, this inelegant crime flick with Treat Williams and Seymour Cassel has the Tarantino-esque touches of violence and comedy.

What it lacks is anything approaching the same substance or style. By Russell Smith Dallas Morning News mesmerizing as Vincent, a swaggering, genial hood who shoots heroin or human beings with the same elan. When he takes Mia (Uma Thurman) who's married to Marcellus, the tough black mobster for whom Vincent works out to dinner he's determined to keep the evening safe. And then Mia overdoses on his heroin. Bruce Willis, in what may be his best performance ever, plays a boxer who agrees to throw the fight for Marcellus.

When he wins and reaps the huge rewards of betting on himself, he knows he has to disappear fast. But then he bumps into Marcellus with his car, and they end up in the nightmarish hands of some truly creepy sadists. Harvey Keitcl is the Wolf, a slick, level-headed guy who Marcellus calls when there's a mess to remove. When Vincent and his buddy, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) shoot somebody's head off in a car, they panic just a little.

In comes the Wolf, who oversees the cleanup with darkly funny efficiency. "Pulp Fiction" has several peripheral stories as well. Amanda Plummer and Tim Roth play lovebird robbers. Tarantino himself pops up as Jules' nervous friend. Eric Stoltz and Rosanna Arquette are heroin-dealing newlyweds.

Christopher Walken is the Army buddy of Willis' dead father. A truly great soundtrack keeps the tone hip and even steals a scene or two. Not that Tarantino doesn't have plenty to spare. "Pulp Fiction" is riveting filmmaking funny, visceral, stylish and so unabashedly original that you never want it to end. 'PULP FICTION' Rating: for violence and language Players: John Travolta, Bruce Willis Director: Quentin Tarantino Critlo's call: the-horse situation because ultimately I really consider myself a storyteller.

"Literally, what happens is I start telling a story and the characters end up going in that area. People will ask me questions along the lines of, 'Well, is there anything when it comes to violence that you wouldn't do, that would just be over the line, that you just couldn't go that My first answer to that question is usually, well, I don't think about it like that, just trying to put more violent images on the screen. That's not that noble an ambition nor is it that hard to do, to tell you the truth. "But what I can answer is, when I'm telling a story, I'll have a ghost of an idea of where I'm going, but it's always open to the characters to take it where they want. When you're writing a story, you come to many forks in the road as to which way you can go.

Sometimes there's like six tunnels available to you, sometimes it's four tunnels. Usually, the most organic way to go is where it naturally should lead. "What I can say is that when I've come to those tunnels, none of them has ever had a roadblock in front saying, 'Do not enter this I wouldn't do that to myself as a storyteller or to my characters. If that's the way they should go, then whatever happens, happens. Wind him up and Tarantino goes.

He's enormously talkative, with an energy level that's off the charts. At 31, he's in the enviable position of having complete freedom as a filmmaker. He's also a star who gleefully describes how he spent his 20s working in a video store, learning everything he knows from watching movies. He wrote the screenplay to "True Romance" when he was 25. See bottom of next page By Marylynn Uricchio Post-Gazette Film Critic It wouldn't be accurate to call Quentin Tarantino the darling of Hollywood.

A lot of people hate his movies. They object to his tasteless display of graphic violence, his foul language and remorseless characters, and most of all, his total disregard for the traditional structure of a screenplay. But a lot of other people think Tarantino is a genius, a boy wonder like Orson Welles who has turned cinema on its car with his fresh and original talent. When his new film, "Pulp Fiction," won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival, they felt vindicated. Tarantino's fans, whose numbers include most of the film critics in the country, seem to come to his defense more than he docs himself.

He's too enthralled by movies, and the movie-making process, to care about his reputation as an amoral bloodmtister. "I'm not trying to be Mr. Super Master Manipulator," he says on the phone from New York. "The idea that I'm going to try to come up with this really wild sequence that's going to freak everybody out that's kind of the-cart-before- 4 Weekend, October 14, 1994.