ONE of the most influential films of recent years, audiences have another chance to take a look at Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction at Harbour Lights Picturehouse this week.

To some it is a flashy, gratuitously violent triumph of style over content, to others it is the film that confirmed Tarantino as one of the most distinguished and talented contemporary American directors.

It is undeniably a superbly written, complex, ultra-violent, almost unbearably tense and often hilarious thriller with an outstanding cast and some surprising performances, most notably from John Travolta.

Drawing his inspiration from the lurid low-life characters found in the cheap yellow-paged crime novels of the 1930s and 40s, Tarantino develops the narrative structure he used in Reservoir Dogs; here intricate cross-cutting and flashbacks are used to weave together three tales of small-time criminal life in LA.