10 Most Sympathetic Movie Kidnappers And Hostage Takers

10. Honey Bunny And Pumpkin - Pulp Fiction (1995)

The preamble is such a well-known framing device that the affectionate nicknames no longer sound sickly. But the mild South London tones of Tim Roth (€˜Pumpkin€™) and the nicotine-stained, middle-classn Amanda Plummer (€˜Honey Bunny€™) sound as out-of-place in a downtown LA diner as British estate gangs might if they called their local police force €˜the feds€™ (rexcept that, well, they do that now don€™t they?). It isn€™t long before the cooing lovey-doveyness erupts into something feral: "Any one of you f*ckin€™ pricks move and I€™ll execute every motherf*ckin€™ one of you!" intones Ms Plummer, as the coffee-shop patrons cower beneath her waving handgun. It€™s a harsh prelude, both to robbing the joint via holding its patrons hostage and to Tarantino€™s classic '90s portmanteau movie. It€™s also American urban nihilism given form. In September 1968, a small-time bandit named Richard Lee Tingler had turned back after robbing $562 from an Ohio bar and announced to the six people inside: "What the hell, I ain€™t got nothing to lose. I€™m gonna kill you all." (Tingler€™s crimes appear to have part-inspired Nick Cave€™s song €˜O€™Malley€™s Bar€™, on his Murder Ballads LP.) It€™s a statement that might have been the motto of the late-20th-century USA - randomly, meaninglessly violent and lacking any recognition of value in human life. In the real world outside QT€™s inter-textual movie-movie dimension, the Pumpkins and Honey Bunnies have laid waste to innocent strangers. That we€™ve emotionally invested in them by the time the temporally tricky stories return, at the end of the movie, to the diner is a tribute to the king movie geek€™s dab hand at genre archetypes. Some iron-fisted handholding by a much cooler €™type (Sam Jackson as hitman Jules) allows them to flee the joint without either spilling blood or having their own blood spilled. Tarantino was well aware he was playing narrative games a dimension or two removed from the reality of violent crime, and even signposted it: in a refrain at the movie€™s epilogue point, Honey Bunny (or, to give her distinctly non-Anglo character name, Yolanda) hollers, "Any one of you f*ckin€™ pr*cks move and I€™ll execute every one of you mother*ckers!" Check it out against the prologue version above - it€™s different and it€™s no simple continuity error (if that was the case, why not just reuse the same footage?). The lowlife lovers€™ reckless violence doesn€™t offend us because we know we€™re watching self-conscious movie characters. For their more authentic inspiration, we have to go a little further back...
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