Practically tailor-made for a film buff (as well as for a viewer who watches occasionally), 'Dogs' is a picture loaded to the brim with terrific visceral energy

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2003)

Whenever the name Quentin Tarantino is mentioned nowadays, people treat him with the same reverence as Scorsese, De Palma, and other directors as such who have fiddled around with the crime/gangster genre to create personal, heavy-duty masterworks. However, at the time this film was first released, as was with his still best picture 'Pulp', he was regarded as a filmmaker who makes violent movies, filled with violence, chock full of violence, "too violent" (if there ever could or should be such a thing in movies), etc. This is unfair. True, Tarantino writes and works his actors to such an intensity that the feelings that go with violent acts and violent tension is there, and true he shows the blood, he lets us hear the cries of agony and despair, and indeed there are times that bullets fired into people are shown as such right in frame.
Yet he never exactly displays any truly violent acts (he decided to leave the shot of Masden slicing the ear on the editing floor, unlike a director like David Lynch who gets right inside the matter) - his technique is to evoke and strive for all of the emotions one would feel in such asituation, movie or in real life, to the most honest, near heart-wrenching limits, and thus to someone who may have even not even seen the film the images that appear in a trailer or on a video box bring the notion of this being an overly violent movie immediately. That the images we see throughout the film, bloody or not, stay with us long after the credits roll, is a testament to his dedication, and obvious trust, to his craft being as it is.
The plot, while lifted from a Chow-Yun Fat film from the mid-eighties, is the first one to include his trademark non-linear storytelling design. Sure, this is not uncommon in most films, but since each scene has a meaty quality to it, with line after line of (purposeful, to story as well as character) dialog is spoken, you really don't know what to expect. A crime boss (Lawrence Tierny) assembles different criminals of different backgrounds, removes them of their given Christian names, and gives them pseudonym colors as the heist comes up. The robbery itself has a big hitch- cops are alerted sooner than thought, shoot-outs occur, some colors are wiped away, and the remaining assemble in the rendezvous to sort out what went wrong and who's to blame.
For most films with such an ambitious and grounded script, nearly every performance is a crucial asset to the film's success, and Tarantino knows this in his bones, as well as in the casting of the right parts (i.e. Steve Buscemi auditioned for Mr. White but got Mr. Pink, makes sense doesn't it): Keitel and Tierny are like old pros merely portraying old pros; Roth has a true breakout performance as Orange; Busemi himself proves why he's needed in film today; Chris Penn makes for a fine supporting role; Masden is one of the most convincing of the 90's psychos; even Tarantino makes a perfect monologue for himself in the opener. Right away these actors give off the only impression they should - these are people that we can care about, despise, or watch in a lack of judgment as they float away in a flash - they've got to be human all the way.
So, is Reservoir Dogs for everyone? Not necessarily- children under the age of nine or ten, I'd suggest, should stay away even if they can understand and take the violence since it's really an film for maturer mindsets. But, for the passionate movie-goer, or for thrill seeking screen nuts, it's worth the ride. For one thing, I'll never think of "Stuck in the Middle With You", or Steven Wright for that matter, the same way again. My opinion- Tarantino's 3rd best effort behind Pulp Fiction and From Dusk Till Dawn, and nearly superior over Jackie Brown. A+