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RESERVOIR DOGS
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
RESERVOIR DOGS is a film that gets more entertaining every time I watch it. It does not come
from the suspense or the mystery, which dies after the first viewing. It comes from watching the
characters interact and listening to the dialogue. I still laugh out loud every time I hear Mr.
Blonde (Michael Madsen) say “Was that as good for you as it was for me?” after cutting a man’s
ear off.
The film is about a heist that goes wrong. The criminals that survive rendezvous at an abandoned
warehouse and quickly figure out that they were set up, and that there is a rat in the house. Who it
is is the film’s central mystery. After the heist, most of the film takes place in real time, with
flashbacks inserted throughout.
Watching the characters interact is what makes this film so much fun. In the first scene, the
characters sit around a restaurant table eating breakfast. They discuss Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,”
tipping waitresses, and talk about shooting each other (“If you shoot me in a dream you better
wake up and apologize”). They speak like we would expect real people to speak, not like movie
characters. Tarantino’s screenplay is not afraid to have these characters spew out racial diatribes,
because real people talk like this. If the racist characters offend you, good, but it should not turn
you off on the film. What amazes me most, I think, about this film is the fact that the characters
are so unlikeable, but we still care about what happens to them.
The first two characters to arrive at the warehouse are Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange
(Tim Roth), who was shot in the gut and is bleeding profusely, followed by Mr. Pink (Steve
Buscemi), who is the first to realize that they were set up. Seeing Mr. White and Mr. Pink go
from agreeing with each other one minute to pointing their guns at each other before we even
realize what is happening amuses me to no end.
At this point, Mr. Blonde is introduced. He had been talked about by Mr. White and Mr. Pink
prior to this. He went on a shooting spree during the heist, so they are naturally mad at him (“A
psychopath isn’t a professional,” says Mr. White). Expecting a raging madman, we are taken
aback at his appearance: cool, calm, and sipping a soda (although what he does later confirms our
expectations).
The violence in this film is brutal. Mr. Orange lies in a pool of blood, passed out when he is not
screaming in pain, for most of the film. During a torture scene, a man’s face is slashed and his ear
is cut off. Although we do not see the latter actually happen, it is much more cringe-inducing than
it would have been were it shown on-screen. What we picture happening in our minds is much
more terrifying than knowing what is actually happening. The scene is eventually played for
laughs, however, when the torturer comments on his work.
Just like in the torture scene, when we do not see what is happening, Tarantino toys with us
throughout the entire film. We never see the heist, only its aftereffects. Had we seen the heist, the
dialogue in the warehouse would have been superfluous. Not knowing what had already happened
makes the scenes in the warehouse that much more interesting.
My
Rating: ****
Review by Jared Mills
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