Like vultures picking away at the carcass of a slaughtered cow in the midday sun, independent filmmakers have picked apart every last shred of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The execrable Curdled, which Tarantino himself executive-produced, might be the only film to legitimately be based upon a character from Pulp Fiction, but first-time writer-director Skip Woods' Thursday seems based not just on Pulp Fiction, but on the character Tarantino himself played in that film. Like the third segment of Pulp Fiction, it revolves around a suburban, upper-middle-class, semi-retired gangster (Thomas Jane) who desperately tries to keep his criminal life a secret from his staid, conservative wife. In Thursday, Jane's crisis is brought on by a visit from an underworld acquaintance (an underutilized Aaron Eckhart) who brings with him a shitload of cash and drugs—and, along with it, a slew of criminal lowlifes (Mickey Rourke, Paulina Porizkova, James LeGros, and Glenn Plummer among them) who circle around Jane in search of Eckhart's stash. Directed by Woods in the lookie-me-I'm-directing-a-fancy-art-movie style favored by many Tarantino imitators, Thursday is a visually impressive, ridiculously violent, well-acted, and thoroughly enjoyable B movie. But it's also juvenile, offensive, and gleefully, sickeningly exploitative. At 82 minutes, Thursday doesn't quite wear out its welcome, but its all-encompassing sleaziness still leaves a bad taste behind.