Movie Reviews

Reservoir Dogs

"Reservoir Dogs" is a 1992 crime film by Quentin Tarantino (his first long feature). It stars Tim Roth as Mr. Orange, Harvey Keitel as Mr. White, Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink, Quentin Tarantino as Mr. Brown, Edward Bunker as Mr. Blue, Chris Penn as Nice Guy Eddie, and Lawrence Tierney as Joe Cabot. This movie lasts 1h39.
A movie with a strong opening is always a good movie. The film starts with all the bandits sitting at a round table in a diner, and they talk about… Madonna. The camera pans around them all, in a circle behind the men's back. This chest-level view is really interesting and makes the men intimidating despite the topic of discussion. The oldest man, Joe, stands up and announces he will pay for the bill, and the other men should only take care of the tip which will be a dollar each. Mr. Pink says that he never pays tips, which turns into a vocal argument with the other men still at the table. We get an insight into their personalities (I didn't pay attention to it so well, but I'm pretty sure that this is the role of this diner opening scene). Mr. Pink ends up paying his tip, and the men, all in black suits, leave the diner and get into a car, in a low FPS slow-motion that serves as background for the opening credits.
The immediate first scene after that is Mr. Orange covered in blood (Tarantino blood!) squirming in a car driven by Mr. White. They arrive at the meeting place, a deserted hangar, and start to wait for the other criminals. From then on, both the audience and the characters in the movie try to understand what just happened. Apparently, their job was to rob a jewelry store, with a very low margin of risk, and yet, they were ambushed by the police and shot at and dispersed. Mr. White is persuaded that there was a rat in their ranks, and the whole movie is spent in suspense for the characters trying to find who it is. Besides, Mr. Blonde started shooting at civilians once the alarm at the jewelry store was triggered, so there is a lot of apprehension toward that character as well. He also tortures a young policeman, Marvin (Kirk Baltz), that he abducted during the heist. As I said before, all these men have very different personalities despite all being robbers: for example, Mr. Blonde is a complete nutjob, while Mr. White is very calm and loyal toward his teammates. I could probably come up with descriptions of each robber if I saw the movie again, but those two characters really stuck out as having particularly unique personalities. I really don't want to spoil this movie so I won't go further into the story, but it's a movie I enjoyed a lot, and it mostly takes place in one closed space (the hangar) which is something I really like. I will only say this much though: I loved the end scene, it's very intense.
On non story-related aspects, first of all, I adore Tarantino's writing of dialogues (or whoever wrote them, but I'm pretty sure it's him?) He definitely has this talent, and it's in others of his movies as well, like Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. For example, there is a real importance given to storytelling and anecdotes by the characters. I'm not actually sure if it means something, but it's quite entertaining and again, gives us insight into the men's traits. The actors act marvelously. In general, the camera angles are rather non-traditional, such as shooting from a corridor to film what's inside a room, or being in a corner of a room or behind a piece of furniture, which gives the audience the impression that we are spying on the robbers. There is use of non-original music to alleviate violent moments (such as the torture scene), mostly through a 70's radio with an apathetic host. Once the plot is set into motion, Tarantino takes time to tell some of the men's backstories, by literally showing a black frame with "Mr. White" written or whoever it will be about. That is pretty unusual, but at least it is done rather organically from what was happening right before (a focus in dialogue and action is done throughout the last 5 or so minutes on said character).
(SPOILERS RIGHT BELOW, STOP NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE!)
One particular scene really caught my attention for the quality of storytelling: the "commode story". The infiltrated cop is told by another policeman expert in infiltration that he needs to have an anecdote to tell robbers to enrich his past as a criminal. It's a story with many details that he learns by heart, and when he actually tells it, there is a visual representation of the anecdote. But since it is a fake story, we see the cop telling the story in the scene itself (does this translate well into words?). Like, we see him enter the bathroom, and he says "I walk toward the urinal" as he does so. I think that it's a neat way to set up a lie being told in a movie.