1992 | Dir. Quentin Tarantino | 99 Minutes
"The things you gotta remember are the details. It's the details that sell your story."
Loyalties are questioned and accusations are leveled when a carefully coordinated jewelry store robbery carried out by six unrelated strangers goes horribly, spectacularly wrong.
Writer/director Quentin Tarantino's first feature-length film is an entertaining crime story that revels in misdirection and subverting expectations. The heist at the center of Reservoir Dogs is never depicted on screen. Instead, the picture exclusively focuses its attention on a series of fascinating character moments alternating between the inconsequential humorous banter among a crew of miscreants leading up to the crime, and the respective ways the robbers deal with the aftermath of a job gone awry. While most of the crooks featured in the story are far from endearing, they become at the very least engrossing characters as the exceptionally composed dialogue grounds their behavior and central motivations, affording the audience a glimpse into their inner lives.
Reservoir Dogs is a showcase of superb camera moves and slick editing. The one-take shot that follows Mr. Blonde as he steps out of the building to retrieve a gas canister halfway through his frighteningly casual torture session is remarkably crafty. In the same torture scene, the camera deliberately pans away from the film's most gruesome act of violence, leaving the audience to fill in the excruciating blank. The sequence in which Mr. Orange rehearses his phony anecdote until a fully dramatized version of the scene plays out is surreal and sublime.
Harvey Keitel delivers a thoughtful and appropriately personable performance as crook with a heart of gold Mr. White, and is alternately outright harrowing when the picture reaches its bloody climax. As Mr. Orange, Tim Roth's character spends most of the film bleeding out on the floor, but his vulnerability is convincing and all the more heartbreaking when the story reaches his flashback sequence. Always a pleasure to watch, Steve Buscemi does manic pessimistic misanthrope like no one else and Mr. Pink is one of his quintessential roles. As the eerily calm psychotic career criminal Mr. Blonde, Michael Madsen is, perhaps unfortunately, the coolest he'll ever be as featured in this movie. The film also features Lawrence Tierney as the amusingly blunt Thing-lookalike crime boss Joe Cabot, Chris Penn as his jovial son Nice Guy Eddie, Kirk Baltz as doomed cop Marvin Nash, Randy Brooks as Mr. Orange's savvy confidant Holdaway, and comedian Steven Wright supplying a hilariously dull voice for 70s radio station DJ K-Billy.
Reservoir Dogs is a well-acted, tightly-paced, meticulously-constructed little film. The heist movie in which the robbery is the least important part of the narrative is a remarkably strong directorial debut for Quentin Tarantino, putting on full display his talent for crafting memorable characters, amusing banter, and palpable tension.
THE STORY BEHIND THE TITLE
A possibly apocryphal account suggests that Tarantino came up with the title while working at Manhattan Beach movie rental store Video Archives when he recommended Louis Malle's 1987 film Au Revoir les Enfants to a customer who turned it down saying "I don't want to see no reservoir dogs!"
QUENTIN TARANTINO AS...
- Mr. Brown, who dies shortly after fleeing the scene of the crime
NOTABLE NEEDLE DROPS
- The opening title sequence set to Dutch group George Baker Selection's "Little Green Bag" as the core cast marches through a parking lot is instantly iconic
- The Stealers Wheel hit "Stuck in the Middle with You" will forever be associated with ear mutilation
- Harry Nilsson's novelty song "Coconut" is a decidedly dissonant end credits song considering the film's rather grim finale
FRAGMENTS
- Reservoir Dogs shares notable plot similarities with Hong Kong director Ringo Lam's 1987 undercover cop movie City on Fire; a 1995 short film assembled by a Michigan film student entitled Who Do You Think You're Fooling? accentuates these similarities by cutting together clips from both films
- According to Tarantino, Mr. Blonde (aka Vic Vega) and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction are brothers
- Edward Bunker, who appears very briefly as Mr. Blue, was a real life career criminal
007 CONNECTIONS
- Michael Madsen (Damian Falco in Die Another Day)
MCU CONNECTIONS
- Tim Roth (Emil Blonsky in The Incredible Hulk)
