"Five Total Strangers Team Up For The Perfect Crime. They Don't Know Each Other's Name. But They've Got Each Other's Number"

Reservoir Dogs (1992): 8/10

Poster (c) Artisan Entertainment

It's safe to say Quentin Tarantino is the master of the crime genre. With only four movies directed, though, it seems a little presumputuous to say that. And having seen three of the four, I don't really seem to be in a position to say that. However, when one of those movies is a masterpiece, another is a stunningly entertaining work, and the third an impressive debut piece, it's hard to say anything but that. He directs his films with such a loving eye towards the genre that it's easy to see what he wants you to get out of it: a good time. And that is what he accomplishes.

Six men are brought together to perform a heist. They are Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Brown (Tarantino), and Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker). They're all hired by Joe (Lawrence Tierney) and his son Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) to steal some diamonds. Things get out of hand, as it turns into a massacre and one of the thieves is a rat.

Reservoir Dogs has a different feel to it than Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill did. I suppose that those two movies were fun to watch. Dogs wasn't really fun to watch. It was interesting and all, but I didn't really have a good time while doing so. It does pick up the pace as it goes through its short runtime, thankfully, with more flashbacks and all. There is barely any music in the film, which is what made it seem longer, and music was key to Pulp Fiction. And the violence wasn't over the top like Kill Bill, which was the essence to that movie. Then again, it was Tarantino's first film.

That's not to say that Reservoir Dogs wasn't entertaining, it just wasn't enthralling in the same way those other two movies were. Dogs had interesting characters who wound up in a strange situation, and much like Pulp it's a talking heads movie. The dialogue is interesting and profanity-laden, which adds to the uniqueness of the movie. Like those other two movies, too, Tarantino puts in titlecards for the flashbacks, which help, I suppose. Dogs is a hard movie to write a review for. There's a lot going for it, but it just wasn't fun to watch.

Many of the actors here came back to do other Tarantino work. Keitel, who plays a pretty level-headed guy here, plays Winston Wolfe in Pulp; Roth, who doesn't have to do that much for most of the movie, was Pumpkin in Pulp; Buscemi, who does a great job as the terminally interesting and entertaining Mr. Pink, was the waiter in Pulp; Madsen, who plays my favorite Dog, Blonde, because of his gleeful derangement, is Budd in Kill Bill. All add to the movie as a whole. Reservoir Dogs is an interesting movie, and I know that it will continually get better on repeat viewings.

Rated R for strong violence and language.

Review Date: February 18, 2004