I choose to review the opening of 'Pulp Fiction' because it is on a similar wave length to our film 'Omerta'. This film was made by Quientin Taratino in the year 1994, and won many awards for best writing, best action film best actor and so on. It is similar to our film as it uses flashbacks to tell the story, and is in a non linear narrative.The opening of the film starts with a black background, and a description of the word 'Pulp' appears on the screen, this is slightly similar to our title sequence because when the word 'Omerta' appears on screen, the words 'The Code of Silence' appears afterwords, and that is what Omerta is.
The first scene opens into to a well light diner called, Hawthorne Grill, and we see two people sat at a table, dressed in civilian clothes, but the camera is just slightly looking up at the two so this suggests that they have a part to play in what is to come. We hear the man, called Pumpkin, say ' Forget it, its too Risky, I ain't doing that shit' with the women, Honey Bunny, replying with ' You always say that, you say that every time, I am through never again, its too dangerous'. The camera stays in a medium shot of both of the characters sat at the table discussing the pro's and con's of robbing banks. A waitress comes to the table and the two stop discussing the bank robbing, and the camera moves to a close up of the waitresses face as she asks if they want coffee. Honey Bunny asks for coffee and the camera follows the coffee mug to the cup, and we see a close up of Honey Bunny's face as we had only seen it slightly from the side.
Further on into the conversation, we cut back to the same shot from the beginning as Pumpkin is explaining why they should attempt to rob the bank as he thinks it will be easy. From this scene alone you cannot exactly tell this is a mafia style film, as in our film, starting with a poker scene, with some men sat round a table dressed up, you cannot tell it has mafia links into until one of the poker members is poisoned.
As Pumpkin starts to get Honey Bunny interested into the idea, the camera slowly cuts to the characters perspective, point of view, to show their reactions to what is being said, and it continuously uses shot reverse shot between them both. You can tell by the way Pumpkin and Honey Bunny talk they have done things like this before, because of all the swearing and the stories Pumpkin tells Honey Bunny to try convince her to go along with him. Then it starts cutting from the original medium shot of the table to a shot from over the shoulder of each character as Honey Bunny is starting to like the sound of Pumpkins plans. The camera's cuts seem to speed up because the two characters are starting to get excited about what they have planned and are getting ready for it.
As the two characters settle on robbing the diner they are in, Pumpkin pulls out a gun from his pocket, and the camera cuts to Honey Bunny's perspective, as Pumpkin slams the gun to the table, the camera cuts to a match on action just before the gun hits the table. The camera then quickly cuts to a close up of the window next to the table the two characters are sat at. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny lean into the cameras view and start kissing before they attempt to rob the diner. The camera then slowly cuts to a long shot if the two saying they love each other. As Pumpkin quickly jumps on to the top of his seat the camera tilts upwards at an high angle to show he is now very powerful with his gun in his hands as he yells 'Everyone be cool, this is a robbery'. Then Honey Bunny then jumps into the middle of the screen, also with a gun in hand screaming orders to the customers and staff, the camera is looking up at both of the two but with Honey Bunny in the foreground, which could suggest she has a bigger role to play in the film but also has a lot of power.
Once Honey Bunny finishes yelling, the music kicks in and a freeze frame happens of the two holding up their guns, the music is non diagetic and is for the title sequence, it is very fast and up beat to build up tension for what is to happen after the title sequence. The title 'Pulp Fiction' slowly slides up from the bottom of the screen, written in huge yellow font.
The title sequence fades to black and the music dies down, but can still be heard, buy only very quietly. Then we see two men smartly dressed in suits, similar to the costumes we will use in our film, and now we start to see the mafia traits coming in. The two men in the car, Jules Winnfield, the one furthest away from the camera, divining, and the one closest to the camera, Vincent Vega. They are both talking about Vincents return from Amsterdam. They both are just casually talking to each other about what is different between where they are now and Amsterdam. The camera shows the two to begin with with a medium shot inside the car, but as Jules starts to talk, it does a close up of his face, and as Vincent talks it does the same to him, slowly cutting between the two as they are just talking like any two normal people. You can just hear the radio of the car in the background, but the sounds of the two men's voices overpower it, so that suggests they are talking about something important.
The camera then cuts to a dark place, as the boot of the car is lifted, we realise that we are within the boot with a high angle shot of the two looking into the boot and taking out two guns. The way the camera looks up at the two men is suggesting this two are very important in this film and hold quite a bit of power.
This now show that this is a mafia film as they are out on some sort of a 'Hit' which is very common in Mafia films.
The boot close and the camera fades back to black, then fades back in to see the two hit men going into an apartment building. As they walk to the door they are talking about their bosses wife being in a TV show. Jules grabs the door and pulls it open, the camera then cuts to the other side of the door to a match on action of the two men walking into the building. The camera tracks in front of the two men as they go looking for the apartment they are here to visit, still talking about the bosses wife and what happened to the last guy who touched her
Further on in to this scene they make it to the apartment they have come to visit, the camera cuts to an over the shoulder shot of the two men looking at the door. They keep mentioning a lot of Mafia phrases like 'take her out' meaning to kill her, as Jules indicates with fake gun made by his hand, held to his head, as this is not what Vincent meant, it still shows that this has mafia traits.
The two men enter the apartment, and after talking to the three men inside, Jules brings up what they were talking about in the car to try and settle down the three men in the apartment, while Vincent is looking around in the background. Once Jules explains why they are here, that these three men had betrayed their boss, Jules puts his gun to one of the men's head and says 'Where is it?' the man tells Vincent to look inside the cabinet next to his feet.
Vincent come out of the cabinet and the camera zooms in on him as he pulls out a brief case with a number lock on it. The camera then quickly cuts to an extreme close up of Vincent inputting the numbers '666' as the code, which suggest whatever is inside the case is something bad as '666' is the sign of the devil. The camera then goes to a medium shot of the Vincent opening the briefcase, and a golden light shines out of it and onto Vincent's face.
The camera cuts to a medium shot of Jules and the man in the chair, yelling at him saying 'You think Mr Marsellus Wallus is looks like a bitch?' and that they are here to send a message that Mr Marsellus is not a force to be reckoned with. Which is similar to our film as that is why Joe Messina is sent to deal with Leo Ramone as Leo toke advantage of Alexandro Messina.
Now they have got what they have come for, the camera does a close up of Jules once more as he repeats a verse from the bible, before both Vincent and Jules execute all of the men showing no remorse, the camera quickly cuts from Vincent to Jules continuously, as they violently slaughter these men. The scene ends by the camera slightly looking up at Jules as he lowers his gun, and the screen fades to black.
In this film we see a lot of violence which is what is normal to a mafia film, and this is what our film would involve if we were to film it all, however in our first scene there is some violence as one member gets poisoned at the table but this is much more subtle than the violence in Pulp Fiction.
Also our films are quite similar in the way we both use Nicknames to cover certain characters identities, for example in 'Pulp Fiction' the first two characters we see are called 'Pumpkin' and 'Honey Bunny', and in our film Luciana will be using the alias 'Miele' to cover her tracks. Furthermore both of our films use a non linear style story telling, both done by using flashbacks. In 'Pulp Fiction' we start in the Diner, then flashback to what happened leading up to what is going to happen in the Diner. Whereas in our film 'Omerta' we will also be using a flashback in the opening to show what Joe Messina means when he says 'He wont be a problem anymore', but if we were to finish the entire film we would also use many more flashbacks.
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