I went to write this review and then read Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino, and Pulp Fiction’s entire Wikipedia pages instead.
Honestly I typed the heading to this article 45 minutes ago.
So now I’m here, wondering why I’m not the next great American film writer/director. And the fact of the matter is Quentin Tarantino has staked out a place for himself among the best filmmakers of all time. He consistently churns out movies that amaze, horrify, and move his audience, and he could probably go on doing this forever, because he is so in touch with his visual style and voice.
Just no more cameos please.
Reservoir Dogs is the film that is named as having revolutionized independent film (along with Tarantino’s second film, Pulp Fiction). Tarantino, working in his little video store in Manhattan Beach, had the idea to make a heist movie with his friends on 16-mm black-and-white film for $30,000. Harvey Keitel got ahold of the script and helped him raise $1.2 million. After a few screenings at Sundance, Cannes, and Toronto film festivals, the film was later distributed by Miramax and totaled $2.8 million in just 61 theaters. This doesn’t count the £6.5 million original run gross in the UK, and then millions later in VHS distribution. HIS FIRST FILM. NO STUDIO. I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T.
I can’t even right now. Okay so basically Tarantino tells the story of a diamond heist gone terribly wrong, and has stated that the film overall is a montage to Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 film noir, The Killing. He also has mentioned the title came from when he recommended the film Au revoir les enfants at his video store and a customer thought he had said “Reservoir Dogs.” Who knows.
Look at this cool-ass gif someone made! This is from the first scene in the film, where the main characters get breakfast before the heist. Basically, six criminals are hired for the job, and are all given codenames of different colors.
Cut to, Tim Roth bleeding to death in the back of a car!
The heist went… not as planned, and characters meet at the designated hideout to find out if there was a police informant in their group.
And the control that the criminals have over the situation just devolves from there. The film seems to give more importance to the way the story is told than what its actually telling, as Tarantino plays around with different pop culture references, homages, and gruesome violence.
I always thought the trunk shot was Scorsese’s thing, as he uses it in the 1990 film Goodfellas, but apparently it was Tarantino kind of made it his “thing.”
What I found interesting about the film is the way it gives attention to the most mundane dialogue as if it were as important as the relevant plot details. Pulp Fiction does this as well, it’s sort of a messing with the audience, since dialogue in film is normally so deliberate and minimalist.
Also the film is so bro-y and racist at points that I think I looked away almost as much from that as I did from the graphic violence.
Speaking of which! The film is so graphic, that many moviegoers, including Wes Craven, the director of A Nightmare of Elm Street and Scream, walked out of the theater in shock. Tarantino takes this a success, saying, “That’s OK. It’s not their cup of tea. But I am affecting them. I wanted that scene to be disturbing.”
I won’t tell you the scene. But I will tell you that I did NOT expect it to drag on for so long, teasing the viewer by refusing to turn the camera somewhere else.
And it’s not that I haven’t seen more violent films. I definitely have. But I think that’s the key to Reservoir Dogs, that it’s disturbing nature is so deliberate and affecting. I’ve seen slasher movies that felt less fucked-up.
Anyway the film has earned its place as a true classic of American cinema. It’s #76 on the IMDb Top 250, and has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not bad for a directorial DEBUT.
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