“Go” (Doug Liman, 1999)
When Roger Ebert reviewed “Go” back in 1999, he used the first paragraph to talk about the lasting legacy of “Pulp Fiction,” including the fact that “sooner or later the statute of limitations has to run out” on comparisons between new movies and Tarantino’s game-changing masterpiece. And the critical consensus was pretty much in agreement: even though, as Ebert said, “the shadow of Q.T. falls on many scenes,” Doug Liman‘s energetic, candy-colored follow-up to “Swingers” was a deeply entertaining ride in its own right. (It was also, with the country’s youth currently under the spell of a dance music renaissance, ahead of its time.) The biggest debt “Go” pays to “Pulp Fiction” is in its shifty, interlocking narrative that follows a trio of threads, all loosely connected back to a Christmas-themed rave in Los Angeles, and in its cooler-than-thou attitude, with snappy, tough-talking drug dealers, kooky cops and a coolly detached view of violence and its real-world repercussions. (It’s also worth noting that Liman was once again latching onto contemporary urban hipster tropes.) The power of “Go,” which unfolds with a nearly hallucinogenic vividness (like “American Graffiti” on ecstasy), is that you aren’t actively attributing this debt to Tarantino as the movie is going on. It’s hilarious and involving and warm on its own terms. “Go” is one of the rare son-of-“Pulp Fiction” movies where it didn’t matter if the influence was obvious; it was that damn good. [B+]
“The Big Hit” (1998)
Tarantino is famous (or is it infamous) for liberally borrowing from a whole host of cult Hong Kong action movies—everything from Ringo Lam‘s “City on Fire” (which he appropriated large swaths of for “Reservoir Dogs“) to John Woo‘s immortal classic “The Killer“—and everything in between. The weird boomerang effect was that because Tarantino was ripping off Hong Kong cinema, then Hong Kong cinema must be cool in America now too. Tarantino did a fair share of this himself, introducing American audiences to a plucky performer by the name of Jackie Chan via “Rumble in the Bronx” and releasing Wong Kar-Wai‘s “Chungking Express” through his distribution imprint. Of course the downside to this was that other, less tasteful producers and studios thought that since Tarantino had made it cool, they could also try and import that very specific Hong Kong aesthetic for American audiences … which resulted in heaping piles of shit like Che-Kirk Wong‘s nearly unwatchable schlock-a-thon “The Big Hit.” Wong, who directed the hit Chan film “Crime Story” in 1993, leaves any traces of subtlety or substance behind, in this bloody, garish tale about a hitman (Mark Wahlberg) who gets involved in a bumbling kidnapping scheme. It’s loud, it’s obnoxious, it’s sexist, and worst of all … it’s boring. What makes the whole failed enterprise even more baffling is the fact that John Woo produced this piece of shit, a year after making his best American film “Face/Off.” You can’t blame him for wanting the Hong Kong aesthetic to become viable domestically, but sadly something major was lost in the translation. [D]
“2 Days In The Valley” (1996)
One of the more self-evident “Pulp Fiction” rip-offs, although presumably written after a double-bill of that and “Short Cuts,” with a disparate group of characters, including a pair of hitmen and a few femme fatales, clashing over the titular 48 hours in LA, John Herzfeld’s film is mostly forgettable, joyless and overly convoluted, and correctly remembered really only for introducing the world to future Oscar-winner Charlize Theron. The plot kicks off with hitmen Lee (James Spader, at his most sleepy-eyed disinterested) and Dosmo (Danny Aiello) killing Peter Horton, at the behest of his wife (Teri Hatcher), only for Lee to shoot Dosmo so he can run off and split the cash with his girlfriend Helga (Theron). But Dosmo survives, taking shelter at the house of a British artist (Greg Cruttwell, from “Naked”) and various others gathered there, including suicidal TV producer Paul Mazursky. It’s the kind of movie where no characters really act like human beings, but just perform actions to move the plot along, and the performances, with a few exceptions, are about as memorable as you could get from cogs in a machine. The dialogue thuds rather than sparkles, Herzfeld (last heard of directing “The Making Of ‘The Expendables’ ” ouch) helms with little-to-no flair, and there’s an icky tone of misogyny even for this genre. Really the only reason to watch is the first glimpse of Theron’s impressive screen presence, poured into an even more impressive white catsuit, if for nothing else than a reminder that she’s gone on to much, much better things over the years. [D]
“Amores Perros” (2000)
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu has his foibles—oppressive seriousness, and an at-times comically dour tonal and thematic palette—but the man is still a gifted filmmaker, one of the best of an impressive roster of modern Mexican directors, in fact. That talent was evident from the beginning in his first, and still best, feature to date. Its similarities to “Pulp Fiction” are pretty clear but mostly surface: three interlocking stories that see characters occasionally cross over; a criminal element; harsh violence. But beyond that, “Amores Perros” (aka “Love’s A Bitch”) is its own beast—a gritty, unflinchingly hard-edged portrayal of loyalty and disloyalty, painful cosmic jokes, fate, and the way love can evolve so fluidly into hatred (and vice versa). The film’s success led to two more projects between Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (the also great “21 Grams” and the just OK-with-moments-of-greatness “Babel” which made up their loosely connected Death Trilogy) before they went their own creative ways. Arriaga continued his obsession with the hyperlink film when he wrote and directed “The Burning Plain” whereas Iñárritu left it behind to make the more focused “Biutiful,” so perhaps it was the screenwriter who was more influenced by ‘Pulp’. Regardless, “Amores Perros” is a fantastic film that rises well above any Tarantino rip-off labels. [A-]
