8 Problems With Pulp Fiction That Nobody Wants To Admit

6. It's Kind Of Soulless

In Sam Moore's New Statesmen essay exploring Pulp Fiction's twenty years legacy, he echoes the aforementioned idea that the film has nothing to say, but he adds to this criticism when he writes that Pulp Fiction "doesn't make you feel anything." The emphasis here is on the word "feel," in the emotional sense - and he's completely right.

Pulp Fiction, after all, is more concerned with crafting cool scenes and dropping badass musical cues than it is with getting the audience to feel anything. The movie is essentially the cheeseburger that Jules and Vince talk about during the car ride at the beginning; you eat it and you feel good in the moment, but nothing afterwards. Because Pulp Fiction doesn't want you to empathise or sympathise. It doesn't want you to relate to anything.

Jackie Brown, Tarantino's best movie, works in the opposite way. Audiences are made to care about characters like Jackie and Max, and the film is stronger as a result. It doesn't take away from the fact that - just like Pulp Fiction - it's essentially a homage built out of other movies, but it does give the movie something that Pulp Fiction sorely lacks: soul.