Uma Thurman Here: Pulp Fiction Before Pulp Fiction

I never saw Mad Dog and Glory on release back in 1993. Catching up to it in 2020, its rather a revelation. There's Robert DeNiro looking small and timid and thin and YOUNG(even though he's 20 years into his career there). There's Bill Murray being believeably menacing and psychotic as a mob boss(and YOUNG, ditto.)

And there's Uma Thurman, with a rather fetching and love-inducing character(for DeNiro AND for us -- when she's given to him as a "one week gift of friendship," we go NUTS waiting for her to become aggressively, consensually sexual...but we have to get to know her first.)

What caught my attention is how much Uma's acting -- her voice, her expressions, her sudden facial "plunges" into low self-esteem and embarrassment - - match up EXACTLY with her much more famous performance one year later in "Pulp Fiction."

Very little of the Uma Thurman of 1993(this movie) and 1994 (Pulp Fiction) seems to have survived the decades. She's not like this at all in Kill Bill 1 and 2. Its like a moment captured in time of the alluring and sympathetic actress Thurman could be.

I suppose history will tell us if Uma's more famous turn was in Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. I'm picking Pulp, even if Kill Bill gave her much more to do(like, the starring lead in two movies in one.)

And since I'm picking Pulp Fiction as Uma's greatest role, I offer her up in Mad Dog and Glory as coming CLOSEST to what she did in Pulp Fiction, just a year earlier.

And -- yes, gotta mention this -- wearing a lot less clothing in one big scene. What John Travolta was forbidden to do in Pulp Fiction with Uma, Robert DeNiro gets to do with Uma here...and it is most enjoyable for all.