Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino’s major directorial debut in 1992 made an impact like few others in the history of cinema. Buoyed by a tremendous word of mouth buzz in The United States which made it a cult sensation, and an outright box office smash in England, where it’s credited with singlehandedly inspiring the British gangster genre with the works of Guy Ritchie and others. The story of how it was made is Hollywood lore in its own right. Tarantino was set to make it home movie style with the help of his friends, when a passing acquaintance whom he had given the script to had passed it on to Harvey Keitel, who called Tarantino directly and offered to raise the money and produce it if he could star in it. The rest is history, as even with a low budget, a tremendous ensemble cast was assembled and the world was stunned by the results. Tarantino’s gifts as a writer were on display just as much as they were in his later films. The ability to take disreputable characters usually seen in films as stereotypes and completely, totally humanize them and make them real while still being funny, likable, and entertaining to watch is a joy to see. The story, not all that original itself, sees six criminals being brought together and each given aliases of a different color (to avoid being IDed) by a powerful LA area crime boss to take part in a jewel heist which is never shown onscreen, but nonetheless from what we are told goes horribly wrong, and they’re left to scatter for themselves before reaching their main rendezvous point, an abandoned warehouse owned by the crime boss, and try to figure out what happened, with almost all agreeing that the whole thing was a setup for the cops and that there may very well be a traitor in their midst, leading to a series of arguments and mass paranoia punctuated by flashbacks where we get to know the crew better when they were setting up the heist, and almost all of it is so well written and acted that one figures that Tarantino must have had a lucky rabbit’s foot (to paraphrase one scene) to get these kind of results right out of the gate of his career, but one must also concede that the pacing is as tight as a drum here (something that can’t always be said of his later films) and the camaraderie and chemistry of the actors is second to none, starting with a wonderful casual dialogue scene among all of them in a coffee shop the morning of the heist, and then the iconic opening walk by the actors in slow motion over the opening credits. In the key role of Mr. White, Keitel is the biggest star in the movie, yet not really the main character, more like a voice of reason with a misplaced sense of morality (he has no problem with beating, torturing, and killing cops, just not “real people”) who basically risks everything to protect another member of the crew in one of the film’s most interesting subtexts. What appears at first to be a somewhat big brother like affection for the younger crew member starts to turn into something almost creepy and homoerotic once the younger crew member gets badly wounded during the getaway, with Keitel practically gushing and caressing his younger comrade, and his almost obsessive actions later on where he pretty much betrays his criminal masters to protect his little friend instead of being a good soldier and doing what he’s told almost confirms it. Tim Roth as the younger crew member in question (Mr. Orange) gets the most scrutiny because he’s the least known of the group, but yet still manages to turn out to be somewhat the hero of the film (or at least the one we identify the most with) despite laying in a pool of his own blood for much of the running time given what we learn about the character and his own motivations for taking part. Michael Madsen as the most notorious character, the psychotic Mr. Blonde (a.k.a. Vic Vega, younger brother to Pulp Fiction’s Vincent Vega as played by John Travolta), an individual so twisted and sadistic that it may have negatively affected Madsen’s career options as a leading man forever, given the way it is said how he went on a killing spree during the actual robbery and then as we witness in one of the most infamous scenes in movie history, brutally torturing a captured police officer not really for information, but just because he really, truly, literally gets off on the idea of torturing a cop for shits and giggles, which is a recurring theme of the movie that criminals have zero regard for the lives of cops and consider them to be a lower form of life for whom nothing too horrible a fate is forbidden. Then there is Steve Buscemi (in a career breakthrough role that put him on the A list) giving arguably the best and most aggressively likable performance in the film as Mr. Pink, a guy with a (correct) mercenary attitude who’s solely looking to protect his own ass, and is not afraid to stay level headed and use logic and reason as to whom he can and cannot trust, including smartly pegging Madsen as NOT being a cop due to his vicious killing rampage during the heist while at the same time Keitel constantly threatens to kill Madsen for the same reasons. Buscemi’s gift for playing chattering yet intelligent and totally watchable characters first came to the fore here. Plus we have Lawrence Tierney in a classic example of Tarantino “old pro” casting as the grizzled crime boss who plans the whole heist, bringing years of experience as a tough guy on and off screen to what is possibly his best remembered role, matched by Chris Penn as his jogging suit wearing spoiled rotten son, a 30+ year old grown man with a propensity for calling his old man “Daddy” in front of others, and the only character who comes off as truly NOT being tough except for the fact that he has money. The rest of the main crew is rounded out by Eddie Bunker (a real life pulp fiction writer and retired criminal extraordinaire) as Mr. Blue, and Tarantino himself as Mr. Brown (“Doesn’t that make me Mr. Shit?”), getting an hilarious opening monologue about the meaning of Madonna’s Like A Virgin but not doing much else before quickly being killed. Finally, special mention must be made of Kirk Baltz as the tremendously suffering hostage cop who nearly makes it to the end of the movie, and given his actions while being tortured, might be the most heroic character of all. In all, just an extraordinary concoction that is still looked at with awe today given the budget Tarantino had to work with yet knowing that budget doesn’t account for a killer script with ratchet dialogue and pulling it off beautifully. In the end, not only the most significant debut for a writer / director in at least the last 25 years, but one that many feel has still not been topped…
10/10