I don't think it's a stretch to say this is on par with Pulp Fiction. I'd rate it very slightly below. The performances from everyone, in my opinion, were excellent. Melanie Laurent was stunning.More than the dialouge in other Tarantino movies, I thought in this one the suspense was bubbling underneath the dialouge--that it wasn't the dialouge itself. But it's extremely difficult to pull it off, to build suspense effectively with so much going on below what is being said. Agreed, that the conversations in this film are radically different than in other Tarantino films, but no less engaging or purposeful. The climax was magnificent. Just magnificent.