Life Requires Conflict

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 1999)

Plot Summary for Long hu feng yun (1987) http://us.imdb.com/Plot?Long+hu+feng+yun+(1987)
Yes, it seems that Chow Yun-Fat played the Mr. Orange in Reservoir Dogs part a year or so earlier.
Quentin Tarentino was said to have worked in a video store at the time he penned the screen play. Whether he is conscious of the similarities is unclear.
Regardless, by itself, Reservoir Dogs is an example of American filmmaking distilled from American filmmaking. Tarentino has taken thousands of hours of film and video and produced a new piece of work. The question whether this film is entirely original hurts, but not enough to remove this film as a new benchmark for filmmakers.
To say it simply, films can demonstrate aspects of life that change our lives, sometimes long after the movie is forgotten. There are very direct educational or industrial training films and then there are films that provide deep insight into human behavior and the relationships between people.
I thought the black suits used by the gang of jewel thieves was ripped off of
Ocean's Eleven (1960) http://us.imdb.com/Title?Ocean%27s+Eleven+(1960)
And that's the heist movie that I used for comparison. I've always hated gangsters, in real-life and in the movies, and I always hated the images that Frank Sinatra purveyed as a gangster (in real-life and in the movies). "Reservoir Dogs" doesn't try to seduce the audience into thinking that the criminals are at all likeable. Frank Sinatra's "charisma" was just as slimy as his real life.
I had always liked heist films, usually from the point of view of the thieves. But this film changed all of that. It is easier for me to realize nowadays that thieves would be much more like Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde rather than the singin' and dancin' "rat pack" alcoholics.
Life gets tougher. Harvey Keitel's "Mr. White" was the only character to show even a small amount of concern for any other living thing, and his care and concern was the mistake that brought the entire heist to its bloody end.
Not easy lessons to learn. Certainly not the happy news I was hoping for. For me, spiritualism seem silly since we have so many real-life vampires and predators among us.
"Reservoir Dogs". Most city water reservoirs are on hilltops or out of the way. Most cities buy up the land around the reservoir to add an additional buffer. These areas are usually wooded, kind of wild. The reservoir is kind of a "no-man's land" and any dogs seen there are probably wild.