Pulp Fiction (1994)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[Now for a classic Bust, previously alluded to, that restores a story to its natural narrative order.]

Pulp Fiction (1994) is an American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, for which he shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar with co-writer Roger Avary.

It stars John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette and Christopher Walken, the first three of whom all received Academy Award Nominations for their performances.

In the end Bruce Willis escapes with his ill gotten gains.

Early one morning, on their way to collect an overdue debt owed to their gangster boss, Ving Rhames, super-cool criminal strong-arms Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta discuss the minutiae of life and the fact that Travolta has been asked to escort Rhames's trophy wife Uma Thurman while her violently over protective husband is out of town.

In the process of recovering their boss's money, the pair take a hostage, but not before they survive a point-blank shootout with another of the group of young male drug dealers who owe Rhames money, all of whom Jackson and Travolta end up shooting.

However, their hostage doesn't survive long either, as Travolta accidentally blasts his head off in the back of the car that Jackson is driving all three of them to Rhames in.

The hapless, blood splattered pair land up at the home of Jackson's only friend in the vicinity, Quentin Tarantino who cannot get rid of them quick enough, as he is expecting his straight-laced wife home from her night shift at any moment.

Marital disaster is only averted when, after Jackson's pleading, Rhames arranges for a legendary underworld problem-solver played by Harvey Keitel to help clear up the mess.

The previously sharp-suited pair end up dressed like a couple of stoner beach bums discussing Jackson's sudden decision to retire over breakfast in a coffee shop following their miraculous survival earlier.

There they become involved in a Mexican standoff when a couple, played by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, desperate for money, attempt to hold the diner up.

With cool determination to follow a new and peaceful path, Jackson manages to defuse the situation, allowing Roth and Plummer to make off with everything bar the case of money belonging to Jackson and Travolta's boss.

Delivering said case, the pair run into aging prize fighter, Willis accepting a large sum of money from Rhames in exchange for taking a dive in his next bout.

The next day, on his way to chaperone Thurman, Travolta drops by the home of his supplier, Eric Stoltz, to score and shoot up.

Thurman herself is no stranger to illegal substance abuse, and snorts her own chemical high in the washroom of the 1950s rock'n'roll themed, lookalike staffed restaurant that Travolta has taken her to for dinner.

Suitably stoked the pair are delighted when they manage to carry off the restaurant's twist dance contest trophy.

Back home, while Travolta is using her bathroom, the happy mood is shattered when Thurman decides to sample Travolta's stash that she finds in the pocket of his coat that she is wearing.

Panicked, Travolta rushes the comatose Thurman back to the source of the drugs, where he and Stoltz manage to administer a life saving adrenalin injection directly into Thurman's heart, much to the delight of Stoltz's wife played by Rosanna Arquette.

Not surprisingly, Travolta and Thurman decide not to share this aspect of their evening's entertainment with Thurman's husband.

At it turns out, Rhames, soon has bigger fish to fry, as come fight night, Willis manages to set himself up for life by double-crossing Rhames, using his payoff to bet on himself and win against the odds, by, as it turns out, fatally defeating his opponent.

Holed up in a motel room the next morning, Willis is enraged to discover that his girlfriend, Maria de Medeiros, has failed to bring the one thing of personal value from their home that he had asked her to, an irreplaceable watch of his dead father's, handed down through the men of his family over various conflicts, eventually coming to Willis as a boy by way of a dying request of his father's to a Vietnamese prison camp comrade played by Christopher Walken.

Reluctantly, Willis cautiously returns to his apartment to retrieve the watch, only to discover the automatic weapon of a now lone Travolta, carelessly left on the kitchen counter, which Willis uses to gun down the defenseless Travolta as he emerges from the toilet. (Pretty much everything that happens to Travolta's character in the film involves the toilet one way or another.)

Fleeing the scene, Willis thinks he has made a clean getaway in his girlfriend's compact car, only to, quite literally, run into Rhames at a set of traffic lights.

Both badly injured in the collision, Rhames chases Willis down on foot into a pawnshop devoid of customers, where they are captured at gunpoint by the shop's owner.

Unfortunately for the pair, the owner and a law enforcement buddy he calls to the scene, are a pair of Deliverance (1972) style rapists. However, while Rhames is suffering at their hands in a separate room of the shop's basement, Willis is able to escape his bonds.

About to flee, Willis decides instead to save Rhames, by disabling his attackers with a Japanese sword that he finds amongst the various items in the shop.

In return for rescuing him, and promising to leave Los Angeles and never reveal the fact of his rape, Rhames agrees to overlook Willis's earlier betrayal.

So while Rhames sets about exacting revenge on his two injured abusers, Willis is free to leave with his girlfriend on the back of the soon-to-be-dead lawman's chopper bike.


It is interesting to consider why Tarantino decided to mix up the story's chronology?

Perhaps he felt that Jackson and Travolta surviving the Mexican standoff and safely "walking off into the sunset" in their shorts and t-shirts with their boss's briefcase was a marginally more upbeat ending than Willis and his girlfriend "riding off into the sunset" on a rapist's chopper bike, Willis by that time having murdered the Travolta character?

We may never know. But one thing is for sure, that Tarantino produced a wonderful movie, which never fails to entertain.


[Notice that although the timeline of the story was restored in the Bust, the Willis character's childhood experience was left as a flash back, because that's exactly what it was.

All the rest of Tarantino's mucking about with the narrative produced a circular storyline, which both made the audience think and added interest, of course.

Restoring the proper chronology of the plot explained, to at least one person, why Travolta was on his own when Willis encountered him in his apartment: Jackson having "seen the light" had already done his last job for Rhames, so Travolta was working alone by that time.

Plot Buster connoisseurs will no doubt have noticed that this is quite a bit longer than most Regular Busts. Its greater length reflects its different purpose.

When a Bust is used to reveal how a particular outcome came about, much of the irrelevant plot can be ignored.

However, the purpose of this Bust was to explain how the various plot elements fitted together, so more of the plot had to be included, leading to a longer Bust.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliverance