Cruel intentions...

Rating: 1/10 (18 May 2004)

((((SPOILERS))))) I can think of nothing kind or good or positive to say about this truly repulsive motion picture. It is, quite simply, cruel.
Quentin Tarantino's badly written script focuses on the events leading up to and the aftermath of a botched jewelry store heist. The heist itself is largely inconsequential to the story, as Tarantino's intent was apparently to create a character study of the participants. Yet, he has failed to give any of his characters anything resembling human personalities beyond phony macho posturing. The cast does little to add depth to the characters beyond the routine tough guy gambit of shouting their obscenity-laden dialogue at the top of their lungs. As such, they never raise their one-note performances above the level of brain dead savagery. But good, bad or indifferent, the actors have little to work with in the first place. Tarantino's much deified dialogue is insultingly dull-witted -- banal pop references peppered generously with tiresome profanity. The kindest thing to be said for Tarantino's ability to direct action is that it, at least, distracts from the emptiness of his written words.
But, it is the violence that pushes the film into the realm of the utterly contemptible. There have been films with more violence and with more explicit violence, but few revel in its violence to the extent of RESERVOIR DOGS. The film doesn't use violence to show cause and effect, or to make a social statement, or to reflect reality, or even for cheap shock effect. It is violence for the sake of violence. The violence in DOGS is purely sadistic; a sleazy, pornographic celebration of inhuman cruelty.

Here and in his other violence-obsessed films, Tarantino embraces the infliction of pain as not just an act of power, but of an almost orgasmic display of gratification. Add to this the fact that the victims of the violence are usually bound, helpless, terrified, tortured, randomly selected and undeserving of such cruelty and the violence clearly becomes symbolic of rape. Worse, such savagery encourages the audience to identify with the perpetrator, not the victim, and Tarantino (all too effectively, I'm afraid) tries to make the viewer complicit in his sadism.
Okay, if Tarantino wants to indulge in his little S&M fantasies, that is his business. What is disheartening is the way people -- filmgoers and professional critics alike -- have been seduced into not just tolerating Tarantino's sadism, but to applaud it as well? DOGS centerpiece is the totally unnecessary and illogical kidnapping of a young policeman who is subsequently beaten, tortured and mutilated, for no apparent reason other than because it amuses one of the psychotic characters -- and, one can presume, Tarantino himself. The director stages the torture sequence like a comic musical number, complete with rock background music and choreography; casually topping it all off with the young officer's murder being the punchline of a joke. "That's entertainment!" seems to be Tarantino's pathetically cruel message.
This killing should inspire anger or, at the very least, pity for the innocent man. Instead, it elicited raves by film viewers who see the scene as stylish, or worse, cool. What does it say about our society that not only do we condone the glorification of senseless violence as entertainment, but applaud it as art? Why have we become so obsessed with the matter of "style" that we can't see that beneath Tarantino's superficial technique there is sadism?
RESERVOIR DOGS represents some sort of low point in the history of cinema. That it helped propel Tarantino to be considered one of the most influential directors of our time represents some sort of low point for society.