Intriguing low-budget caper film stalls midway through

Rating: 5/10 (5 July 2006)

Reservoir Dogs starts off intriguingly enough. It's a perfect crime caper that goes horribly awry. It's a joy to see Lawrence Tierney as the honcho putting it all together and the late Christopher Penn gave his best performance on film as his son. I must differ with other comments on Tim Roth. With his on-and-off British accent and giveaway expressions even when Harvey Keitel is trusting him, I thought his performance was the weakest in the film. Speaking of Harvey Keitel, he and Buscemi play the yin and yang of professional criminals with Masden somehow providing the perfect perpendicular middle ground to each.
So far so good. The violence goes with today's exposition of the genre so it neither bothered me as it did others nor did it inspire genius-worship; it was just part of the accouterments of this movie as far as I was concerned.
*** here's where the spoilers come in *** What did bother me was Masden, very bright otherwise, being stupid enough to let Roth get the drop on him and kill him. At this point, the movie delivers 15 minutes of monotony and a pointless flashback to how Roth insinuated himself into the caper. Finally, Tierney and Penn arrive. The climax is well executed and the "moral" is delicious.
If you are a professional criminal, be professional. Do not let any human frailties, emotions, loyalties, or senses of right and wrong interfere with your execution. There is no place for humanity in the life of a professional criminal.
So, overall, RD is an average low-budget caper film with moments of brilliance and a lot of flaws. It probably deserves a 6.5 from me rather than a 5, but seeing it with an 8.4 and listed as one of the top 100 movies of all time made me feel obligated to try to balance it out a bit.