Any thoughts on Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? It has elements of Pulp Fiction in it. I think I liked it better than PF.
Zulu’s one of those oddities - a “rip roaring adventure” that is about 90% factual (and has the unique distinction of having Chief Buthelezi of the Zulu nation playing his own ancestor).
For a completely fictional equivalent check out “The Man who Would Be King”, also starring Michael Caine.
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is aces, but I wouldn’t say it’s like Pulp Fiction. it’s more like Ocean’s Eleven (crime caper) crossed with The Big Lebowski (comedy of errors).
My cousin worked in a record shop in London (which is on the sleeve of a certain Oasis album cover) and one of his regular customers was the guy who played Errol, the world’s worst getaway driver in Snatch. For those who’ve never seen it, think Fight Club crossed with Ocean’s Eleven crossed with The Big Lebowski crossed with Rasputin, and a side order of wall-to-wall quotable lines.
“Got anything to declare?”
“Yeah. Don’t go to England!”
I’ve just got back from the States where I had an interesting conversation about American TV/films and their British equivalents.
You have Dawn of the Dead (people reacting to the horror of it all like it’s the end of the world or something), we have Shaun of the Dead (well, we would find the zombie holocaust a little bit inconvenient at first, but we’d muddle through it).
You had Heroes - escapist pie-in-the-sky fluff where everyone’s middle class / wealthy / smart / powerful and their abilities are all cool, and there’s no swearing, no smut, no realism whatsoever.
We have Misfits - (there’s no justice - most “superpowers” are deeply uncool if not completely rubbish, and the juvie teenagers behave just like real juvies in England would if they woke up with superpowers - promiscuous, potty-mouthed, selfish idiots who haven’t a clue what to do with their new abilities).
The sad thing is that British films and television of that ilk is rare, but the upside is that when one of those gems comes up you really can’t predict what’ll happen in the film until the credits roll.
America turns out a lot of stuff of that quality or better but oftentimes it’s so formulaic and predictable that the film is less than it could’ve been.
My wife guessed who Keyser Soze was, ten minutes into The Usual Suspects, explained how she’d figured it out, and ruined the rest of the film for me. So The Usual Suspects is my top score for most overrated film.