Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Tarantino is one of my all time favorite directors. Minus the Kill Bill films, I have loved all of his work. He is possibly the only director to master the art of dialogue in absurdly lengthy conversations that last far longer than they have any right to be. That would ordinarily be a turnoff in most films, but Tarantino somehow finds a way to make his dialogue so engrossing and descriptive that I cannot help but get sucked in as his cast delivers his finely tuned lines. This lead to me upgrading several of his films to BluRay and I am finally getting around to watching them. Today I am covering his 1992 debut feature film, Reservoir Dogs (trailer).

Reservoir Dogs is a heist movie without showing the heist. The film is all about the before and after the heist, and the film kicks off with the crew having coffee at a diner and talking shop before it jumps ahead to after the heist which did not go down according to plan and the crew eventually meeting up and debating on what went wrong with many flashbacks introducing the robbers and setting up the big job.

Quentin must have made some solid connections because he had a hell of a cast going into his first film with such a small budget. The criminals all go by codenames. Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) are the core henchmen. There are a couple more crew members who have smaller roles with Quentin Tarantino himself as Mr. Brown and Eddie Bunker as Mr. Blue. This ragtag bunch is assembled by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his son ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie (Chris Penn). Not a single one of these cast members underperform and Quentin got the absolute best out of all of them.

As mentioned above, the film does not show the actual heist, but there are a couple fleeting moments of action when the film flashes back to show Mr. Pink escaping the cops and later Mr. Orange and Mr. White evading capture from the boys in blue. The bulk of the film, roughly two-thirds I would approximate, takes place at the rendezvous point in an abandoned building. Watching the gang dissect how everything went astray and eventually point fingers at each other before everything reaches a boiling point in the climatic finale had me hooked until the screen cut to black. There are countless great exchanges between the cast in here, and compared to Quentin’s other films they will seem brief in comparison before he went all in on mastering the dialogue that eventually won him two screenplay Oscars. Speaking of brief, this is Quentin’s shortest film, which clocks in at just over 90 minutes. I had to do a double take at the playback counter on my TV when watching it again because I am so use to most of his other films going far over two hours.

I recall watching Reservoir Dogs for the first time trying to put everything together and hoping they would eventually show the actual heist, but in hindsight and on this repeat viewing I get why Tarantino did not, and that is because the crew are incredibly effective at painting a picture of how the plan went to hell and back. I also recall the film having an amazing soundtrack. Before Guardians of the Galaxy dazzled us with its eclectic 70s soundtrack, Reservoir Dogs brought its own curated 70s mix to the forefront, with the cast plugging multiple times their love for the fictional local 70s radio block, ‘K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the 70s.’ To this day, probably 15-16 years after I originally saw it, I still think of this film whenever I hear ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ on the radio thanks to Michael Madsen’s diabolical torture scene.

The film has a great HD transfer on the BluRay, which is a 15th anniversary edition. Unfortunately, this anniversary edition is not all that packed with extras. I would have loved a commentary track, but Tarantino is notorious for not providing any commentaries for his own films. There are 12 minutes of deleted scenes worth going out of your way to see as they fill some minor holes from the film and provide some extra background on Mr. Orange. There are only two other extras. Profiling Reservoir Dogs is a seven minute piece profiling the primary criminals and is not worth your time. Playing Fast and Loose is worth checking out though, as it is a 15 minute compilation of interviews with film critics who praise Quentin for his pioneering filmmaking and other aspects of the film. I recall the original DVD I owned of this was packed with extra features and I am perplexed why they did not at least carry those over for the BluRay.

In a way, this is kind of the anti-heist movie, and I would not want it any other way! Tarantino gets by not showing the heist because of how damn good he is at crafting dialogue that had me feeling for every character on screen and how the aftermath of the heist was mesmerizing from start to finish. I am bummed about the lack of extras for such a landmark film, and on top of an anniversary edition too, but that is sour grapes in the grand scheme of things. Tarantino’s films are not for everyone as I spoken to some over the years who cannot tolerate his style of filmmaking, but if you dug his other films and have somehow eluded yourself from seeing his first, or you have not seen any and just want to chance something different then please give Reservoir Dogs a chance!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
The Eliminators
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Joy Ride 1 & 2
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
The War
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past