10 Rip-Off Movies (That Messed Up What They Copied)

By the mid-nineties, with only two films under his belt and another handful of screenwriting credits to his name, Quentin Tarantino had the dubious honour of being the most ripped-off filmmaker alive.

Everything from Two Days in the Valley to The Boondock Saints wanted to ape the director’s effortless cool, his corny/vintage taste in everything from soundtracks to costuming, and his signature endlessly quotable and too-heightened-to-seem-real dialogue.

Unfortunately, while this trend may have paved the way for fellow visionaries such as Robert Rodriguez and Roger Avary, it also produced plenty of sub-par swings at the king which fell far short.

Thus, we ended up with Thursday, a desperately try-hard crime/thriller/black comedy/multi-genre soup which graced our screens in 1998. Following on the heels of Flypaper and The Big Hit, the film follows a former criminal trying to go clean who becomes mixed up in an old accomplice’s scheme, resulting in a string of unexpected visitors arriving to his house on the titular weekday.

What an original protagonist and premise for a nineties indie movie!

However, despite a stellar cast including Aaron Eckhart and Thomas Jane, the film never succeeds in aping either Pulp Fiction’s witty, subversive plotting or Reservoir Dogs’ innovative time-skipping chronology.