The Reservoir Dogs (2024)

The Reservoir Dogs

In 1992, Quentin Tarantino, who had dropped out of high school and previously worked in a video rental store, directed his first film “Reservoir Dogs”.

The plot is simple enough: a group of criminals (Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn and Lawrence Tierney) go on a job that they expect to be successful but it goes very wrong. The film deals with the fallout from the heist and how everything went so bad so quickly. I found it fascinating and was never once bored.

Acting: The acting in this movie is absolutely phenomenal. Every single person here is giving the best performance they possibly can. If I were to pick one stand-out performance it would have to be Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde; with his character he does something that I think most actors would find really hard he makes you like him even though he’s doing horrible things on screen and he does it with such a sick sense of dark humour that it’s impossible not to enjoy watching him do what he does. Honourable mention also has to go out to Lawrence Tierney as Joe Cabot; I thought he played the older, wiser gangster very well especially when compared against his younger, obviously less experienced associates.

Screenplay: Tarantino wrote this movie himself (based off an earlier version called “Black Mask” by Ringo Lam), and while yes it does have the violence that we all know and love from our man QT, this time around the dialogue takes centre stage so much more than any other of his films (with maybe the exception of “Pulp Fiction”, but even then). And goddamn if those words don’t sound like words real people would say! My favorite example being at the beginning when two characters are discussing an ’80s song that everyone knows because of how true-to-life their conversation is.

Cinematography: “Reservoir Dogs” was shot by Andrzej Sekula and I think he did an amazing job with it. What really struck me about the shots in this movie though were how often he would do a close-up of someone’s face and just leave it there. No cutting away, no nothing. Just staring at their eyes or mouth or whatever while they talk for minutes on end. And you know what? It works! Especially considering that every single one of these actors is capable of giving such an electrifying performance with their face alone that it’s impossible not to be entertained by them doing so.

As for the music, well this is mostly a dialogue-driven film set almost entirely within one location (a warehouse) so it doesn’t have an actual composer; instead there’s just a bunch of songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s played throughout which I thought was a nice change. But even still, none of them really took me notice until one particular song came on towards the end and gave the scene such a darkly comic edge that without it I honestly don’t know if I could’ve made it through. So thank god for that song.

To state my stance, not much about the movie bothered me; in fact, it was very entertaining. However, there is one thing I want to point out: two many characters Mr. Brown played by Tarantino and Mr. Blue played by Edward Bunker. While I do understand that this could have been a busy project for Tarantino and appreciate that about him, I still don’t get why he needed a character of his own. He does talk in the beginning and during flashbacks later on (briefly), but that’s all we see of him even though he gets billing in opening credits.

Typically if someone’s name appears before or after ‘starring’ they should have more than just a few words to say throughout the whole movie. This seems like another case where Tarantino is just trying to let people know he was involved with making it so actors will work harder for him or something. Regarding Edward Bunker as Mr. Blue yes some talking then gone; personally I think after this point all he did with rest of screen time was fill up space.

Overall Reservoir Dogs had great acting, well written script/dialogue and never had any boring parts at all. It truly was amazing seeing what someone can create when they’re skilled at what they do and love doing it for a living. Can’t wait to find out what’s next from QT!

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