Tarentino's brutal, offbeat deconstruction of a jewel heist.

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2001)

Tarentino's debut in the film industry, which he wrote, directed and played a small roll in, the brutal and offbeat 'Reservoir Dogs'. The film was originally slated to be made for a mere $35,000 but the films production's budget expended to $400,000 when Harvey Keitel became enamoured with the script and agreed to star and help finance the project.
`Reservoir Dogs' is a shocking and precocious film and echoes films such as `The Killing'. Tarentino deconstructs a fatally bungled jewel robbery, structured similarly to `Glengarry Glen Ross' the actual heist is never seen and what is supposed to have happened is disclosed via flashbacks from different characters points of view. Tarentiono's favourite directors Goddard and Hawks influence are apparent in the fragmentation of the narrative which parodies the criminal subculture with a Hawksism theme of professionalism in which these gangsters of modern times are nothing more but big kids with guns, incapable of controlling themselves and acting professionally.
Similarly to Hawks Tarentino uses extreme violence in which bloodshed becomes a kind of gruesome farce. The infamous torture sequence with the cop is staged in real time making it seem all the more endless, ironically
juxtaposing the upbeat seventies pop classic `Stuck In The Middle With You' playing over the stylised violence in which little is actually seen but rather the viewer is asked to imagine. Typically of Tarentino's dark humour the cop endures having his face slashed and his ear cut off whilst the camera cuts to a `Mind your Head' warning, then being doused with kerosene, only to come out of it concerned that his good looks have been ruined.

Criticised for being gratuitously violent and for having borrowed heavily from various other texts, `Reservoir Dogs' is often looked down upon by many who overlook it as being style over substance. However this film does have substance and a style that stays true to its own and deserves credit for trying to do something different with the worn out conventions of the crime/gangster genre. Hailed as a cult masterpiece by some and condemned as an overly violent rip off by others `Reservoir Dogs' is still definitely worth watching and is still probably Tarentino's best piece of work to date.