I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Michael Caine plays Mickey King--a guy who writes crap novels under a variety of pseudonyms. The titles of these books and his pen names are very funny--but also belie the fact that it is all sleazy crap. Out of the blue, Mickey gets an odd visit. Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander) has come to hire Mickey as a ghost writer for some famous man--but who that man is he will not say. All he's told is to go on some bus tour in Europe and wait for someone to contact him. Most of the trip is pretty boring for Mickey until someone he THINKS is his contact winds up dead. However, like a bad dime novel, the body disappears and everyone behaves as if nothing happened.Soon the man he's supposed to meet is revealed--Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney). Preston is apparently a rather famous but bad actor who has a lot of mobster friends--so many that he ended up getting deported. Now on an island in Europe, Preston holds court in front of a bunch of sycophants. These people don't seem to mind that Preston is a boorish, very crude jerk. Caine is sick of the guy after a while and tells him off--though right after this, an assassin kills Preston and tries to kill Mickey. Why? Who wants to kill Mickey and why? In many ways, "Pulp" flows like a bad old novel. Mickey narrates as if it's some sort of Mickey Spillane story and the story elements also, at times, seem right out of one of these stories. The problem is that when it's not, the story drags and drags. For a while I could enjoy it but it just kept going on and on and never seemed to pick up any steam. I wanted a big payoff but the best thing I got was seeing Mickey Rooney curse and act like a jerk. Overall, a misfire that started with an interesting idea but never developed into anything.

Mickey King is a talented man who writes pulp fiction under several pseudonyms. As the film starts, he is living abroad, after abandoning his native Britain. He gave his latest novel to be transcribed from the tapes he dictated. The agency where the job is being done employs ladies who have a field day listening to the Mickey's narrative as they put Mickey's words into the written format.A change occurs, when the writer is contacted to ghost write a sort of biography by a man that once was a Hollywwod star, Preston Gilbert, whose friendship to mafiosi men in America served to get him deported back to his birthplace, an island in the Mediterranean,off the Italian coast. But before Mickey can get to meet the man, he must endure an adventurous trip by motorcar that almost gets him killed.Director Mike Hodges, went to work right after his wonderful "Get Carter", wrote this comedy probably with Michael Caine, the star of his previous venture, in mind. Both director, and star, show the good rapport they shared as it shows in the finished product. Mr. Hodges was blessed with the casting of some Hollywood stars of the past, Mickey Rooney, Lizabeth Scott and raspy voiced, Lionel Stander. The result is an off beat comedy that has great moments, but does not work as well as Mr. Hodges intended.The best thing in the film is the voice over by Mr. Caine who is heard narrating some of the prose he writes for fans of his genre. Mickey Rooney's Preston was a funny recreation his own experience as a former film star. Others seen in supporting roles include Dennis Price and the excellent Leopoldo Trieste, but unfortunately, their participation is limited. The locations in Malta are captured by Ousama Rawi, the cinematographer. The incidental music is credited to George Martin.

Mike Hodges' GET CARTER (1971) is, supposedly, a realistic gangster flick about a hit man, played by Michael Caine, who murders without demur and, indiscriminately, screws every bird in sight; yet, wells up at the thought that - is it his niece? - has been snatched up by a porno-movie ring. He systematically knocks off mob kingpins and we are invited to watch him do it - with cold-blooded relish.PULP is gangster related too, but pure Lewis Carroll in narrative plausibility; nevertheless, Caine's Mickey King is amusingly credible in the manner in which he drinks in the dream world that happens to him.PULP pulls off something that few films (including SUNSET BLVD., with the marvelous William Holden) are able to do. It makes an author its central character and you believe, from start to finish, that he is, in fact, a man of curiosity and invention, who makes his living by the employment of words.Among Hodges' other films, CROUPIER (1998) is closer to PULP than GET CARTER is because its protagonist's literary pretensions resemble King's habit of describing a shady milieu which operates in moral twilight. Both pictures suffer from direction too tightly melded to intriguing fictional conceits. However, the phlegmatic understatement of Caine's voice-over commentary (written by Hodges) is maintained impressively, the Malta locations and surprising russet colors - not to mention the freak-show supporting cast of Mickey Rooney, Lionel Stander, Lizabeth Scott, Dennis Price, Nadia Cassini's mile-long legs and, Bogart look-a-like, Robert Sacchi make it a must for connoisseurs of the truly offbeat.Was this comment useful to you?

Mickey King is a jobbing writer, spitting out lurid gangster novels under various fake names with the usual mix of violence and sex making them sell. He is approached to ghost write for an unnamed Hollywood "legend" and, pocketing a nice advance for his troubles, he agrees. He travels by coach to meet his subject and meets several strange characters along the way. One of them ends up dead and King steps into the background to let the police find the body but keep himself out of it – however when the body seemingly disappears he is at a loss to explain it and unable to report it.A misfire this one but one that does have some reasonable ideas within it. The gimmick of king's narration versus what is happening and the simple view of his books versus the complex unfairness of reality is a nice idea but it does not translate into a good film. Those that really like the film (both of them) claim that this is not given enough credit because the majority of viewers don't "get" it but I beg to differ – I think it is rating "average" and remembered as such because of the film itself being just that – average. The gimmick wears thin when you realise that there is nothing else than a poorly delivered mystery. Towards the end there are themes and things of interest that vaguely start to drift out but by then it is too little too late. Comparing it to things like Chinatown is a joke and those that have suggested this have offered nothing by way of justification.The cast are mixed. Caine plays to play into his character and indeed he does get some moments of interest with his essentially harmless character, but as the material thins so does his performance. Rooney is interesting for playing an unusual character but offers little more than novelty value. The rest of the cast fill in around the edges in strange turns here and there. Malta as a setting is filmed with a real lack of interest and comes over as dry and colourless – a visual impression that does not help the material one little bit.Overall then an OK idea falls flat as it brings nothing else of interest to the room. Caine tires of it long before the end so it should be of no surprise if you the viewer do as well.