Le iene

Reservoir Dogs is the debut of director and writer Quentin Tarantino. It stars Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, and Lawrence Tierney. Tarantino has a minor role, as does criminal-turned-author Eddie Bunker.

It feels a bit silly to write it now, but there was a time when Reservoir Dogs barely made a ripple in the cinema loving world; in America that is. Upon its release in the States it was moderately successful and comfortably made back its $1.2 million budget. However, upon hitting the British shores it was a big hit and grossed nearly £6.5 million and then Pulp Fiction exploded on the world in 94 and Reservoir Dogs got reappraised in its home country. The rest as they say is history.

Tarantino, the most enthusiastic of film fans, was once a video store clerk in Redondo Beach. There he dreamed of making his own movies and planned to make Reservoir Dogs with his friends on a relatively small budget. As luck would have it, Keitel got hold of the script and wanted in. With his name attached, and using his contacts, a serious budget was raised and so the Dogs were set loose. At the time of its popularity, Tarantino had to guardedly fend off accusations of plagiarism and a charge of just hacking from older classic heist movies. His argument was that he was making his own homage to the heist caper, but even so, the fact remains that Reservoir Dogs is spliced from The Killing, Kansas City Confidential, The Big Combo, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three and we can definitely throw in The Asphalt Jungle as well.

Yet Reservoir Dogs is still extraordinarily fresh and vibrant, raising the bar for crime movies in the modern era. Tarantino of course has since gone on to prove his worth with other projects, so in truth his homage movie was merely the foot in the door for the talented son of Knoxville, Tennessee. In terms of its dialogue, tho, and its gleeful use of "ultra-violence," it has few peers. From any decade. It also helps considerably that Tarantino has assembled a quality cast to make his non-linear classic shine. Keitel is a given, but Roth is exceptional, as too is Buscemi, while Madsen is frighteningly convincing as psycho for hire Mr. Blonde. Then there's the 70s soundtrack, a vital part of the narrative as we hear the dulcet tones of Steven Wright Djing on K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies. If you have not seen the film yet? Then I promise you will remember Stealers Wheel-Stuck in the Middle for the rest of your cinema loving days.

And that's the thing with Reservoir Dogs, it's crammed packed full of memorable things. A quip, a bang, a song or the WTF ending, as homages go; it's one of the very best. 9/10

Crime boss Joe Cabot brings together a group of criminals to perform a big one-off job. To protect each other, they all use colour coded names. However on the day of the job, the police ambush the gang and each makes their own getaway. As the gang comes together at their warehouse meeting point they realise that someone within the gang must have tipped the police or be an undercover. The accusations and suspicions escalate into violence in the confines of the warehouse.

When this film came out in the UK it caused an absolute firestorm of controversy over it's violence, even to the point that it was banned in the UK for a while. I still find this absurd and am very glad we have moved to a more tolerant society where generally the BBFC protect vulnerable groups but let adults decide for themselves. Looking at the media's adoring welcome for the ultra violent Kill Bill one can't help but marvel at how things have changed. Looking at Reservoir Dogs now (or even then!) it simply isn't THAT violent. However what it is is very sudden and all the more powerful for it.

Tarantino directs the film and writes the film in such a way that it was impossible to ignore him even if the film was only a cult hit. The dialogue is both witty at points but, more importantly, very tough and loaded with testosterone. It is the writing that makes us like these coffee shop jokers at the start before shocking us by suddenly throwing us into a backseat bloodbath. The entire job happens off camera, and only occasionally do we actually see the immediate effect of violence - usually we get the aftermath. It is incredibly tight and very tense throughout, I was about 16 when my father took me to see this film - it has stayed with me since and I still considered it to be one of the best `job gone wrong' films of my generation. It may not be original (there's a thin line between a homage and a rip off) but it is certainly effectively done.

The cast are excellent and turn the hardboiled dialogue into convincing scenes. Keitel is wonderful. His character is a father figure of sorts and he is wildly out of control at times and balanced at others. Likewise Buscemi is wide-eyed and freaking out for much of the film, but he does it well. Roth is more balanced but is still good for it; it is his job to carry the emotional weight of the film and he does it well, despite a wandering American accent at times. Madsen is great, maybe not the best character but wildly out of control. Tierney was a great piece of casting, as was Bunker. Penn is good but not the best of the cast.

Tarantino mercifully has little acting to do, but it is his film as writer and director. The flashbacks during the film was a brave way to do it but it really works well - mixing stories with flashbacks and so on. No matter what the time of the scene, it all keeps moving tensely towards the climax. It may be a homage and not as original as some films but so what - it is tight and tense, macho, violent, funny and very enjoyable.

... because the first time around I was somewhat disappointed. This was actually a commercial hit for Tarantino , and that usually means something that is appreciated on the first view.

It is great nonlinear storytelling. You first meet these guys in a diner having breakfast. And you learn lots about their characters just from this very mundane setting and some arguing about the philosophy of tipping. And you wonder why they are wearing suits and thin lapels with white shirts and skinny ties, like they borrowed the Beatles' 1964 wardrobe. It is never explained. And there is all of this 70s music, again, never explained.

Storywise it has been done a hundred times, maybe more. A heist gone wrong. But the gimmick is, you never SEE the heist. Most of the time I like for movie makers to show me not tell me, but this works brilliantly. You see this gang of people who do not know each other talk about the heist beforehand. You see the aftermath of the heist. You see the descriptions of the heist between this band of criminals not exactly matching up. And all of the scenes are mixed up chronologically. Where it shines is the crazy dialogue that happens between these hooligans. Their banter is ludicrous, villainous, and totally engaging. It's like Diner meets Dillinger.

And speaking of Dillinger, a really great touch is having Lawrence Tierney in a supporting role as Joe, mastermind of the heist. Tierney was an actual star of film noirs in the 1940s, and he lost that career because in real life he was somebody who would probably have been quite at home with the characters in this film. He got into lots of bar fights and altercations with the police to the point that no studio wanted to deal with him anymore.

I'd highly recommend this one, but you must pay attention to get the most out of it.

A great creative insight is to take things that we think of as separate and contained (like 'art', 'genius', or 'ideas') and realize how they are fluid and inter-dependent, conditioned by factors. This is not to expose anything as little, deconstruction for its sake; it's to show them to be doable, that a road leads up to them. (It's also one of the three main areas of Buddhist practice)

One obvious way to do this would be to take this and note the many influences. This has been done to death already, every bit that Tarantino hoped to keep packed or wanted us to find out has been laid out in the open. But this just gives us someone, genius or not, who stole from the right places.

Another way would be to see that it doesn't work the same way as it did when new because it has all been made ordinary by slavish followers, gobbled up by familiarity. The moments of simple banter away from plot, the fooling round with edges of story without showing the main center-piece, bleeding on a floor, following Mr. Blonde outside to pick up a can of gasoline; Tarantino was probably proud that he was being "real", making a radical break from Bruckheimer's Hollywood.

It's bits and pieces of Godard, Cassavetes, Altman, and others. To see it now shows how theatric it is, not "real" at all. (The least theatric acting is by the bound cop. Roth is just woeful.) It's The Killers, with the violence and gum pop visuals as typical to see as The Killers was typical without them in its own time.

Me, I'd like to settle for something else that brings us to real influence of a more elusive kind.

Everything you see here is coming from a young guy who was at the best possible time in his life, lifted from obscurity and everything was beginning to click into place beyond expectation. Can you imagine how giddy he must have been to hear yes from Keitel and here's a check?

It's Tarantino coming in from the outside as someone young and eager to make a dream come true; it's bursting with energy but disciplined, kept in check by not having everything at your disposal, being the new kid on set. It would be nothing without this energy.

And it's Tarantino being rooted in his own world as he brings the dream alive, suburban LA. None of the story has any outlet into real lives, it's all bounced around movie cutouts. Gangsters showing up before a heist for breakfast in tuxedos? But it's the video clerk's imagination cruising through his own world. He has guys exchange banter about a stripper from Palos Verdes, Roth improvise a story about buying weed the summer of '86.

So this is the most vibrant sense I get; someone making it, not having to prove himself because he's there, making a movie with name actors around town, relaxed and fired up at the same time. See if you can feel this off his screen presence (and what a stark difference from his surly presence now).

His next one would be the apogee of this path. It can also be traced to the 30 year old who had flown himself to Amsterdam to write away from home like a Hemingway, living the dream.

After watching this half a dozen times with a biased, anti-Tarantino, "what the heck is so great about this guy, anyway" view(which, as most anyone watching any film with that view and a fair bit of self-knowledge will tell you, is a rather fruitless practice in pointlessness... if you've decided you're not going to like it, there's very little reason to think that you will, no matter how good it is; you need an open mind), I finally decided to give it a fair hearing... and I saw it for what it is. An unusual film, at least for its time. A stylish film full of cool dialog, cinematography, editing and music. The whole thing comes together perfectly and is very short of creating a sublime film experience. The plot is excellently written and told. The pace is perfect. I wasn't bored for a second, nor did I ever really want it to move faster or slower. The cinematography is magnificent, and incredibly well-integrated. Pans, dolly trips and, lest we forget, the stationary shots... all perfectly used. Very stylized. The acting is top-notch all-round. With most of the cast being name actors, this is no surprise, but they really do shine. Madsen, Buscemi, Keitel, Roth... all incredible. The one role that had less than good... well, let's be honest, it had rather awful acting. I'm speaking, of course, of Tarantino's character. Now, don't get me wrong; in From Dusk Till Dawn, this man did great. But just about any other time I've seen him act, he just doesn't seem to have the first clue. Being a film-maker myself(albeit on somewhat of a smaller scale than Quentin), I can relate to wanting to cast yourself in a role... but sometimes, you just need to face up to the facts, and admit it if you can't act. Still, that is a minor complaint. Another one might be that there are at least two fairly big characters that seem completely and entirely expendable... they had no real role in the action and could very, very easily have been cut with no real loss to the overall product. I won't name them here, but anyone who's seen the film will know who I'm talking about. All the characters, however, are well-written and their actions credible. Tarantino knows his stuff when it comes to writing... something that also shows in the dialog, which, although somewhat drawn-out at times, is exceptional. Well-delivered, too. When it comes to direction, he shows how talented he is, as well. The film is very well put together. The editing is great, with the non-linear time-line telling the story far better than a "regular" film ever could. One of the many Tarantino-fans, in fact, the very person who originally talked me into watching this film, once told me that he had heard of someone editing films with such time-lines - this, Pulp Fiction, Memento, etc. - so that their time-lines were perfectly linear. I'm sorry, I entirely respect their right to do such a thing... and I won't claim that their doing so has less artistic value than the original films in any way... but I refuse to watch that. A big part of this being so well-told lies in the time-line. Also, I'm a firm believer of watching something the way the makers intended it. Don't edit, don't censor, don't make your own version and pass it off as anything but just that... your own version, and not the original. Sorry, rant over. Finally, I just need to comment on the music... the soundtrack of this is just great. Tarantino collected so many amazing 70's tunes for this film and used them great. All in all, just a really, really good film. Very little keeps this from being a perfect ten, most of which I've covered here. I recommend this to anyone who can stomach the violence and who likes their films with a side of style. 8/10