50 Tarantino Films Tarantino Didn't Direct

Luck Of The Draw (2000)

The Film: An ex-con trying to go straight finds himself lured into the underworld, where a series of outrageous events soon land him on the radar of every scumbag in the city.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: The unbelievable coincidences and quirks of fate that befall the hero are straight out of True Romance , while a cast that includes Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper and Ice-T apes QT's eye for a washed-up star. Throw in a soundtrack full of surf music (including what sounds like a burst of Misirlou !) and the picture is complete.

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: A shameless knock-off. There's even a Mexican standoff in there.

The Immortals (1995)

The Film: A nightclub owner rounds up eight gangsters to perform an elaborate heist. However, when the various rogues begin to compare notes, they realise there's more to the job than meets the eye…

Tarantino-Esque Elements: Wise-talking gangsters pulling the wool over each other's eyes in a tangled plot that only draws all its various strands together at its big finale.

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: It's QT by the numbers, but a talented cast including Eric Roberts and Joe Pantoliano strive to keep things interesting.

A Beginner's Guide To Endings (2010)

The Film: Jonathan Sobol's debut feature in which an ageing reprobate kills himself, and announces via his will that his three sons are doomed to meet a similar fate, having been subject to medical experiments as kids. Yes, it does sound silly, doesn't it?

Tarantino-Esque Elements: The subject matter is pure pulp, but where Tarantino uses such hoary plot devices to let his whip-smart dialogue soar, Sobol's movie stays mired in the vagaries of its labyrinthine plot.

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: Filled with ludicrous coincidences, larger than life characters and Harvey Keitel, it comes across like a Tarantino parody. Poor.

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011)

The Film: The feature-length version of a fake trailer featured in the Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez mash-up, Grindhouse . Rutger Hauer stars as the titular hobo.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: An obsession with the trash cinema of the past, lashings of gore, a venerable old face in the leading role, lengthy, quip-laden monologues… how many do you want?

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: Taken as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the trashy excesses of the past, it's pretty good fun!

The Boondock Saints (1999)

The Film: A gleefully violent crime saga about a pair of brothers who believe they're on a mission from God to take out every mobster they can track down.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: Tarantino plays with the idea of a criminal following a higher calling with Jules in Pulp Fiction . The difference is, Jules only believes his own hype when he decides to leave the profession. Before then he was just quoting "some cold-blooded shit".

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: It has its fans, but to be honest, Boondock Saints isn't a patch on anything from QT's canon.

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

The Film: Josh Hartnett stars as the eponymous Slevin (awful, awful title), who, thanks to a case of mistaken identity, finds himself caught in a gang war between rival crime lords Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: Chronically verbose criminals, a discussion of the various actors to have played Blofeld, a pair of unlikely crime bosses with suitably enigmatic names. This one doesn't so much tip the hat to QT as take a dump in it and plant it firmly on his head.

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: Everything from the title down is trying so damned hard to be quirky, it's very difficult to actually concentrate on what's going on. Which given the incredibly silly plot, is probably for the best.

Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead (1995)

The Film: A group of ex-cons who badly botch their last job find themselves in the crosshairs of a ruthless assassin, who begins to take them out one by one.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: Steve Buscemi as Mr. Shh and Christopher Walken as The Man With The Plan feel as though they've both wandered in from the brain of Tarantino. Quirky criminals, ahoy!

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: It's enjoyably silly, but you do feel that the out-there characterisation is a little bit try-hard.

The Devil's Rejects (2005)

The Film: Rob Zombie takes the road movie to the extreme with this tale of a trio of psychotic siblings and the carnage they wreak during their cross-country odyssey.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: As a trio of nutcases torture and kill their way across America, all the while being pursued by an equally unhinged sheriff, your mind will almost certainly drift to Natural Born Killers . Throw in some extended dialogue riffs and a banging '70s soundtrack and you've got Zombie's most Tarantino-inspired movie to date.

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: As a mean-spirited exercise in depravity, it ticks all the sadistically nasty boxes. Zombie's best film, by a distance.

I Went Down (1997)

The Film: An Irish buddy comedy in which a petty con emerges from prison to find himself straight back in a mesh of criminal goings on.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: For Tarantino and his imitators, the world of crime seems to be one enormous spiders-web of interconnected chicanery. That's very much the case here, as our hero starts knocking down criminal dominoes at an alarming rate of knots…

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: The characters are charming enough (Brendan Gleeson in particular), but the plot is a mass of contrivances, and the dialogue is never as sharp as anything QT would serve up.

Smokin' Aces (2006)

The Film: Joe Carnahan's relentlessly loud crime drama focuses on a cabal of rival hitmen all scrabbling to take out the same target. Big dumb fun.

Tarantino-Esque Elements: Ice cold hitmen, all spouting too-cool-for-school one-liners and eventually crossing one another's paths in a hail of gunfire.

Mr Purple Or Mr Pink: It has its moments, but this always feels like a testosterone drenched music video rather than a proper grown-up crime flick.