Promising

Rating: 10/10 (6 November 2006)

Reservoir Dogs is was started it all. This is a fact. The Sundance Film Festival had in 1992 what was basically Arthur C. Clarke's 2010, the year they made contact. Tarantino broke new bounds in his debut with Reservoir Dogs, Rodriguez broke new bounds in his debut with El Mariachi, Allison Anders with Gas, Food, Lodging, Gregg Araki with The Living End, Jimenez and Steinberg with The Waterdance, Tom Kalin with Swoon, Anthony Drazan with Zebrahead. The one that stuck with everyone and lingered and served as the omen for what was to become a new wave of cinema for the past 14 years was Reservoir Dogs.
As much as I get sick and tired of the truly excessive worship Tarantino receives, one can never ever say his movies are bad. He is one of the few great independent filmmakers that started with a low-budget debut that was actually a truly great film. Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese, two directors whose films can hardly ever be rated below 9 or 10 on this IMDb rating scale, both started off with films that weren't terribly great, and not only that, they like everyone else started off with short films and student films. Tarantino's career just started with this color, star-studded, completely un-campy, blood-soaked drama and has never once gone downhill since. The cinematography gives it the perfect look and gives off intermittent volatility, the editing very subtle even if the keenest, sharpest movie obsessive can tell when a cutaway is a cutaway and an insert is an insert. Do I think he should be mentioned as someone you can never compare to whenever a director makes a crime film? Should every other movie be deemed average or a little above because by comparison Tarantino's genius is no match? No. And I get very frustrated whenever I see instances such as these, which happens to be all the time. Nevertheless, the man is an extraordinary filmmaker, a master from the beginning, which is something you can definitely say is rare.
The cast, all having been in jail at some point in their off-screen lives, is generally excellent. This is one of Keitel's best performances by a long shot. Buscemi turns in an incredibly smart performance, letting us know that he is possibly the smartest one of the whole bunch. Roth is a chameleon, always shocking us with Mr. Orange's transience. Tierney, famously the main livewire during shooting of the film, radiates that unspoken, indirectly communicated grit and spunk in only a few, mostly fairly docile scenes. While the late Penn lingers between false and passable, Madsen is the most memorable and unique. The cold, unpredictable nature of Mr. Blonde appears with the utmost effect in his performance.
This being what has to be a viewing that contributes to what has to be hundreds of times I've seen it, just like most people my age and my sex, I forgot how much the film itself is a film outside conventional storytelling. It begins, as you all know, with a bunch of guys in suits, tough and cool manly men, sitting around a table in a coffee shop theorizing on the song "Like A Virgin" and systematic tipping of waitresses. Then they leave. Then the opening credits start. Then one of them is bleeding to death in the back seat of a car being driven at a grueling pace by another of them. Our thoughts suddenly shift. The film continues in this manner. The plot unfolds in ways where our minds take hairpin turns from what we were immediately expecting and gives us something much better and much more riveting and unpredictable. Though his later films elaborate on his brilliance in writing, Reservoir Dogs remains a clear demonstration of Tarantino's shining gift for the power of the pen. He has what even most of the greatest screenwriters of all time don't have, which is a knack for never giving us what we expect and making us love it and want more no matter how extensive the running time. He also has what every great screenwriter has, and then some.