As several others have commented, Derb’s piece on SNF today is buckets of fun. I remember watching the film in a college course on 1970′s film and culture and being struck by the portrayal of the white, urban working class. It was far more common to see that group on the big screen back then: Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Mean Streets are easy examples. Dirty Harry doesn’t quite count, but Harry was a gruff cop who lived in a dumpy studio apartment–a far cry from, say, the slick, urbane detectives living in modernist palaces in Michael Mann’s films. Hollywood was, I think, a lot more willing to let their heroes look and live like ordinary people during that time.

But I’m not sure I agree with Derb when he writes,

SNF was John Travolta’s finest moment, too. His only moment, perhaps — if he has since made another movie that was half as good as SNF, I missed it.

I’m sure many would dissent, but I’d argue that Pulp Fiction was as good or better, and that the character Travolta plays–an ornery dim bulb hit-man low on the mob totem poll–resembles, at least somewhat, the urban, working class characters from SNF, although in this case, as a representative of the criminal class rather than the working class (which may tell you something).