There is so much talk about Quentin Tarantino-esque.  What is 
that exactly? Is it simply a telling of a story in disjointed 
structure? Non-continuous time lapses, flashbacks, flashforwards? 
Is it a cast of unique characters who could have a movie of their 
own if they wanted to? Is it the dialogue, crisp and direct while 
it refers to usually everything except the subject at hand?

A lot of movies have tried to duplicate this Quentin Tarantino-
esque element without any success. Quentin Tarantino has recently 
tried to duplicate it himself and ironically enough, even he has 
failed on several occasions. What the fans of the quirky director 
loved so much in Pulp Fiction was completely lost in Kill Bill 
Volume 1. Many critics thought of this filmic effort as the 
beginning of the end for the auteur; they felt that he had 
finally sold out to Hollywood and would now start to make more 
conventional bits that felt more like they were lifted out of a 
comic book.

Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were indeed two of the 
filmmaker’s masterpieces because they did not try to be larger 
than life. Those storylines focused mainly one the interactions 
between the characters, and there was such reality in the 
dialogue and everyday subtlety that audiences were immediately 
taken in and kept there until the very end.

Go was the first film by director Doug Liman to try to replicate 
the broke structure that Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction 
reinvented – mind you, this wasn’t new. Many of the French avant-
garde filmmakers used this style, especially Alain Resnais who is 
best known for his abstract masterpiece Last Year In Marienbad. 

Then came Memento that revolutionized film editing, and although 
the film technically was a tour-de-force, the story lacked the 
Quentin Tarantino element. It was dead, it wasn’t vibrant, the 
characters – including the lead – were wooden boards walking 
around like zombies.

Crash and Machiavelli Hangman are two of the most recent examples 
of broken-narrative treatments in filmmaking and although they 
are both stunning observations on the human condition, they too 
lack the Quentin Tarantino element. 

Crash didn’t have that sense of quirkiness. The characters were 
all serious and instead of working as individual stars, they all 
worked together to create a superb cast. Machiavelli Hangman 
had the quirkiness and the brilliance of Tarantino aesthetics 
but it missed the serious undertones.

So this journey continues, as we wait impatiently for another 
Quentin Tarantino-esque film to come out. This may be from an 
unknown director or may actually come out of the king of 
quirkiness himself. After all, the term was inspired by him. 

Rudolfo Fritzenberger is a movie reviewer. 
He is talking about the upcoming movie 
Machiavelli Hangman
http://www.hangmanmovie.com