Produced by: Lawrence Bender.
Written by: Quentin Tarantino.
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, and Michael Madsen.
Edited by: Sally Menke.
Studio: Live Entertainment.
Year of release: 1992.
Run time: 99 Minutes.
Budget: $1.2 Million.
Gross Revenue: $2,832,029.
It's a little late in the game to be talking about how Reservoir Dogs revolutionised cinema and spawned dozens of imitators. That sort of analysis has already been performed by countless academics and film critics the world over. You don't need me to tell you that Quentin Tarantino pretty much birthed the concept of a bunch of ruthless gangsters dropping pop culture references in their dialogue, you already know it to be true.
I guess the purpose of this review is to see how well the movie has aged. The first time I saw Reservoir Dogs I think I was about 15 and I remember thinking how fucking cool it was. My dad was the one that actually got me onto it. He played in a local touch-football competition, and the name of his team was 'The Reservoir Dogs.' I think they lost every game they ever played, but I remember asking him what the team name meant and he told me it was his favourite movie. So the next time we went to the video store, I hired it out and watched it. When I was done watching it, I jumped straight onto Limewire and downloaded both Stuck In The Middle With You and Little Green Bag. For the rest of the day I blared the tracks as a loud as I could without pissing the rest of my family off. Good times.
Now that I'm a lot older and more in control of my finances (though not by much), I had the good opportunity to buy Reservoir Dogs on blu-ray. The HD transfer is really quite something. It feels like you're discovering a whole other movie hidden away in the one that you previously had to view on VHS or DVD at a crappy resolution. The candy red blood is rendered so bright in the HD version, it really is pretty fucking amazing.
All technology aside, how do I think the film has held up after almost 20 years? Yeah pretty good. I mean the whole glorification of violence is still as shocking and cool as ever. It's one of those movies that really benefits from multiple viewings, because once you know what's going to happen, the build-up to certain events sends you giggling with morbid glee. In the second or third viewing, you really begin to appreciate Mr. Blonde's introduction: Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi are in the middle of a moderately serious argument and Mr. Blonde appears only to say: “You kids shouldn't play so rough; somebody's gonna start crying.” It's such a classic line, that is morbidly hilarious the second time round because you know that the character is a complete fucking psychopath.
Indeed, the older I get the more I think I'm affected by the violent spectacle that is the torture sequence set to Stuck In The Middle With You by Steeler's Wheel. There is something so darkly nihilistic about Mr. Blonde's innate hatred for the police officer in this sequence. We already know that he doesn't consider them as real people, so when he says: “The best that you can do, is pray for a quick death; which you're not gonna get.”, you know that he's telling the truth. The thing that is so disturbing about the sequence is that it's such a cool sequence. The music begins and Mr. Blonde starts dancing before we cut to the bound police officer who has just realised that this is really going to happen. What's more is that the cut is done to the rhythm of the music. By allowing us to groove to the song for a few moments, Tarantino effectively lowers our socially constructed abhorrence and ever so slightly exposes that primal thirst for violence that has enabled us to survive for so long. So, when we view this sequence we are simultaneously overjoyed at its inherent coolness, but also disgusted that we find such a thing cool.
For the above mentioned mind-fuck, the film earns five stars right off the bat. Where it loses a star is in the lack of character development between Keitel's Mr. White, and Roth's Mr. Orange. The whole hook of the ending is that Mr. White is so fucking in love with Mr. Orange that he refuses to believe that he is the undercover cop. When Joe Cabot, the mastermind of the whole heist, accuses Mr. Orange of being a cop, Mr. White defends him to the point of death. I just didn't buy it the second time around. I think there needed to be a few more scenes between Keitel and Roth to further cement the nature of their relationship. As it stands, the ending feels unnatural and it really dampens what would have been a perfect film.
Four stars:
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