A tasteless exercise in violence.

Rating: 1/10 (9 March 2005)

When critics say that some films are pornographic because of the way they depict violence, they are referring to the type of violence that appears in "Reservoir Dogs." The film maker's artistic judgment seems to be clouded by a bloodthirsty hatred of police officers. I am thinking particularly of a scene in which a captive police officer is mutilated by his criminal captors. The feeling conveyed to me was one of sadistic joy in the victim's suffering, a sense that he deserved to be mutilated simply because he was a cop. I am sure that some misguided admirers of this film applauded the scene precisely for that reason. Unfortunately, a lot of people hate the police, and for them such a film functions as escapist "entertainment," but "Reservoir Dogs" seems to lack any redeeming value of another kind, like a snuff movie.
The only other time I've seen such poor artistic and ethical judgment in a film was in "Caligula," by the producer Bob Guccione, where in one scene a Roman aristocrat forces a soldier to drink a gallon of wine and then cuts his belly open for the fun of seeing the liquid spill out of it. Some gullible members of the audience actually cheered when they saw that. Like Guccione, Tarantino, director of "Reservoir Dogs" may be a big fan of pornography and possibly he doesn't make the distinction between sex and violence. Certainly everything of his I've seen looks like a porno film stylistically, but he focuses mainly on bloodshed and torture instead of lust and love. Unless you're in the mood for a tasteless exercise in violence, you would do much better to rent John Huston's "Asphalt Jungle," one of the best and most intelligently made caper gone wrong movies ever made.