Ladies and Gentleman: Quentin Tarantino (nice slice of pulp fiction)

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2003)

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) **** Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Chris Penn, Eddie Bunker, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Wright (Voice over only). Best described as "Abbott and Costello Meet Sam Peckinpah", this brutal and brutally black comedy/crime thriller balances sadism with levity, with panache and a taut story line reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing". Chief thug Tierney calls a group of strangers (all given color coded aliases to avoid any mistrust) for a jewel heist, which goes horribly awry. Some clever camera work by rookie filmmaker/writer Tarantino (who plays one of the crooks in a brief role) and viscerally scary sequences (Madsen's torture of a cop to the tune of Stealer's Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You" is the cinematic equivelant of rubbernecking at a car wreck; you want to look away but can't) makes this one unique spin on the genre. Keitel and Roth are top notch as the bonding partners in crime as are Buscemi's weasel and psycho Madsen. Wright's voice overs as a disc jockey are hysterical as is the pre-credit dissection of Madonna's "Like A Virgin". One of the best independent films ever made.