Tarantino Starts Strong.

Rating: 9/10 (11 December 2014)

What is a Reservoir Dog? Michael Madsen is one of them. Steve Buscemi is another. What does a reservoir dog mean? I don't know. Tarantino has said during interviews how he got the name but never exactly said the meaning. I don't care what it means, because that's an awesome sounding name! And the Dogs themselves have an awesome image. So the viewer will be suckered into seeing an independent masterpiece. Tarantino knows how to advertise well. All he did was use a bunch of recycled stories and mesh them together to create this. Tarantino had been a movie buff his whole life with no formal or professional training or education in the business. He would just make movies with his friends and gain experience that way. While Reservoir Dogs is probably his easiest film, it is not his worst.
Reservoir Dogs has a very simple concept: six criminals (Keitel, Roth, Buscemi, Madsen, Bunker, Tarantino) are gathered by a gangster and his son (Tierney, Penn) to pull off a major jewel heist. Everything that could go wrong, does as they discover a rat is among them. These kinds of movies have been done, good and bad ones. Even the bad ones hold some suspense as the viewer is curious to see who the bad guy is. Tarantino, being the genius that he is, gives away who the rat is about midway through, but is able to hold the same amount of suspense by showing the movie out of order and the Dogs in huge trouble. Tarantino loved showing his movies out of order. It made them much better than they actually were. If this was in order, it would have been just another brutally fun dark-comedy. Tarantino putting the movie out of order is like adding great background music to simple scenes, making them ten-times better than they actually are.
Tarantino also introduced his knack for dialogue and characterization. If I'm not mistaken, Reservoir Dogs held a record for most f-words in a feature film at approximately 272. That record was broken by Casino in 1995 and again by Wolf of Wall Street in 2013. When I first saw this, I was shocked to hear the f-word be used that many times. When I watched Casino and Wolf of Wall Street, I wasn't really shocked by the foul language like I was in this. I have seen Reservoir Dogs many times since then and the swearing has gotten less shocking for me. Aside from the abundance of swearing, the general dialogue in which these words are placed in are funny and clever. In the opening scene, they talk about the Madonna song, Like A Virgin. A group of thugs would be talking about something weird like an 80's song in a very derogatory manner. The dialogue paves the way for some cool characters. Most may be stereotypes, but the dialogue makes them rise above traditional stereotypes we all know about.
Reservoir Dogs is perhaps best known for its look and style. The Dogs are dressed up in black and white suites with black shades carrying hand-guns. Their hide-out just looks like its the place for a gang-beat to go down. That portion is very iconic and has since it has been mimicked in various games and shows that follow. The rawness and brutality this movie has to offer is what was poked at the most and what I'm poked it. Lots of blood and gore, but very little violence. I have seen this at many video places in the their "action" sections. I felt cheated out. A brutal movie with no violence is a weird combo. Lots of people liked it, but I found this to be a case of "you can't have one without the other."
Anyway, I highly recommend Reservoir Dogs.
4/4