A solid crime thriller but overrated in my opinion & not one of the best 250 films ever made.

Rating: 6/10 (24 July 2010)

Reservoir Dogs is set in Los Angeles as seven hardened criminals have been hired by big time mobster Joe Cabot (producer Lawrence Tierney) & his son Nice Guy Eddie Cabot (Chris Penn) to carry out an armed robbery at a diamond store, the seven men are given an alias to do with colours & told never to reveal their real names to each other. The robbery goes horribly wrong, Mr. White (co-producer Hervey Keitel) helps a badly wounded Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) to the arranged rendezvous point, an old abandoned warehouse where Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) turns up shortly after. The arguments & accusations fly over what happened & whether someone set them all up, then gun happy psycho Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) show's up with kidnapped cop officer Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz) in the trunk of his car. Tensions rise & emotions run high, no-one know's who to trust as they each become convinced one of the other's is an undercover cop...
Written & directed by Quentin Tarantino who also has a small role in the film as Mr. Brown of the lesser seen thieves this has to be a brilliant film since, at the time I write this comment, it sits proudly at number 64 in the IMDb's user voted Top 250 films of all time. Right? Well no, not in my opinion anyway & I am positive there other's out there on planet Earth who consider Reservoir Dogs a fine film in it's own right but also feel it's a somewhat overrated film. I suppose it was quite a fresh take on filmmaking in general at time, Tarantino's now famous & often copied style of lazy, laid back dialogue between character's that verges on being about nothing in particular that we as an ordinary person in the audience can relate to like the early scene set in the diner where the informal discussion ranges from Madonna to th ethics of whether to leave a tip for a waitress to attention grabbing dialogue we can't relate to but would like to. Well written, catchy & full of profanity it appears people either love Tarantino's ear for dialogue or hate it & whether you consider Reservoir Dogs the classic so many think it is will depend on your opinion of it. At 100 minutes long this is a heist film where you never actually see the heist, just little flashes of the aftermath & the consequences of it. There's one big twist as to who the undercover cop is but I didn't find it much of a surprise to be honest. There are one or moments that didn't sit well with me either, if the cops knew what was going on all along why did they wait so long at the end to raid the warehouse & let their own man bleed to death? Why did Mr. White say he was close to killing Mr. Blone in the store yet when Mr. Blonde show's up Mr. White says Mr. Pink was close to killing him? Why did Joe go to the warehouse if he thought Mr. Orange was a cop?
Almost entirely dialogue driven with very little on screen action or violence I will give Tarantino credit for making a film where not much happens yet still manages to hook the audience & have an impact. The notorious ear slicing scene is very tame in reality, literally nothing of the cutting is seen & while there's some bloody gunshot wounds not much else. There are no female speaking parts in Reservoir Dogs at all which is unusual for a film. Mr. Blue is never seen beyond the opening sequence & his fate was meant to have been filmed but the budget didn't stretch that far & it was never shot in the end.
With a low budget of about $1,500,000 it's said most of the actor's wore their own clothes, well shot with some nice cinematography the production values are good. Tarantino wanted James Woods to play a role, Christopher Walken turned down the part of Mr. Blonde while David Duchovny, George Clooney & Samuel L. Jackson apparently auditioned for roles. The acting is very good from a good cast anyway though.
Reservoir Dogs is a very good film for sure but it's not one of the best 250 ever, in fact i can name 100 right now of the top of my head that better including the Tarantino directed Pulp Fiction (1994) & Kill Bill (2003). A good film I am sure most will enjoy but somewhat overrated in my opinion.