KILLING ZOE: “from the friend of the maker of RESERVOIR DOGS.”
With many and sincere apologies to Roger Avary, whose friendship and early collaborations with Quentin Tarantino served as a springboard for his own accomplished career. Tarantino’s first film Reservoir Dogs is available on Jaman, but we also have available Killing Zoe, Avary’s filmmaking debut.
Killing Zoe was released nearly simultaneously with Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (which was co-written by Avary - the writers shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for the film), and was embraced by Tarantino fans as something of a B-side to Pulp Fiction. Avary’s tale of American safecracker Zed (Eric Stoltz) in Paris for a bank heist shares elements of Tarantino’s films (the bank was originally scouted by Avary as a set for Reservoir Dogs), but Avary diverges from Tarantino in a number of intriguing ways. The Europhile and grotesque elements informing Pulp Fiction’s “The Gold Watch” are more fully fleshed out in Killing Zoe; and the bank heist, an event unseen in (and almost peripheral to) Reservoir Dogs, is central to Killing Zoe (indeed, Avary’s gone on the record saying that the bank in Killing Zoe represents the various levels of Zed’s mind). And Avary’s film is boosted by a pulsing, ethereal score by tomandandy.
Killing Zoe is absolutely worth your time, and right now you can watch it for free here on Jaman! Actually it’s one of a number of recent arrivals that we’re streaming free at the moment – your new favorite movie might be a click away!
