"Are you gonna bark all day or are you gonna bite?"

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2011)

If you go on a screen writing course or read a filmmakers manual, it's likely that the one of the first things you will be told is to minimize dialogue to the bare essentials; that film is a primarily visual medium; that the images should be allowed to speak without unnecessary talking. And yet that notion is consistently challenged by one of the most popularly and critically acclaimed directors of the last two decades – Quentin Tarantino. In this, his debut, the dialogue is a constant accompaniment. The only time there is more than ten seconds without a spoken word is the credits.
The gangster movie has long had a strong relationship with dialogue. That's one of the reasons there were so many of them in the early talkie era. The wisecracks are part of what makes the genre, and Reservoir Dogs contains some choice lines, like "You shoot me in a dream you'd better wake up and apologise". Tarantino – quite deliberately I'm sure – builds the story around numerous gangster clichés. Mr White, the hood with too much humanity. Mr Blond, the sociopathic killer. Mr Orange, the "rat". The dialogue is often used, not just to throw in some tough guy banter, but to add layers to these gangland relationships. Mr Orange tells the rest of the gang the "commode story" in order to convince them he's a real criminal. The story itself is about a narrow escape with some drugs under the noses of a bunch of cops. Meanwhile the cops in this fictional episode are talking about "a civilian who came this close to getting blown away". The anecdote-within-an-anecdote gives a tense commentary upon Orange's tenuous position.
Another advantage of this dialogue-based approach is that there is a lot of information for the actors to play upon and a lot of time to get into their roles. Harvey Keitel is very impressive, personifying the honourable mobster. Lawrence Tierney, who was playing lead men of dubious morality four decades earlier, clearly knows just what his character is about, and portrays the formidable crime boss with laid-back ease. Michael Madsen is simply perfect as the creepy, quiet type (although quiet type in this context only means he pauses for breath between lines), giving off an intense presence while barely making a move. Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth both overact a little, although admittedly in Buscemi's case it is to good effect in depicting the weasely character, and even when Roth is waxing lyrical he makes you realise how poetic some of this dialogue is. Maybe it needs a bit of theatricality.
Despite of his writing so much wordage for his own movie, Tarantino is still very much a visual director, whose camera seems to be finding angles on the action other than those which focus directly on the actors as they're talking. You have for example the wheeling camera in the opening scene, Tarantino's voice disembodied, a long-shot down the corridor as Keitel and Buscemi discuss their predicament, and the lengthy close-up on Keitel as Buscemi rants offscreen. Actually, these are techniques you see an awful lot in very early sound movies around 1930, when sound itself was seen as more of a gimmick than something fully integrated. It's as if the dialogue has its own entity, gliding over images like that radio show soundtrack.
And indeed, a lot of the dialogue is simply there for effect. The essential exposition lines are all there as they should be, but unlike a more typically sparse screenplay, they are buried amongst reams of chitchat that serves only to amuse the audience and add realism and depth to the world in which the story takes place. Tarantino's opening spiel about Madonna's Big Dick is a prime example – completely irrelevant to plot or themes, uttered by a character who does barely anything else of significance in the whole rest of the movie. It seems it is just a funny little observation that Tarantino wanted to say (and, appropriately enough, it is literally him saying it). What we are witnessing with Reservoir Dogs is the beginning of dialogue for dialogue's sake.