Funny, brutal, and intense

Rating: 9/10 (24 November 2017)

Reservoir dogs is a movie about organized crime. Well, it's really about a couple of hired guns who start to lose their cool when a diamond heist goes FUBAR. Everybody is fast to point fingers. "Someone must be a rat!", they proclaim as they try to make sense of what just happened. It's fast paced and has a lot of action to go along with. The cast was really strong and so were the performances. When you watch a movie with well-known actors and you start to forget or should I rather say disassociate their real identity with the characters that they're portraying that's when you know that something magical is happening. This movie has all of the above.
Some might criticize the sporadic use of racial slurs in dialogues but truth be told; this is how mobsters back in the days used to talk. It adds an extra layer of realism to the movie.
The opening scene of the movie is easily one of the most memorable movie scenes and sets the right mood for what's about to happen (in a a way). A bunch of guys sitting in a diner; jerking around and talking about ridiculous stuff. It gives you a good idea about the group dynamics. Who gets along with who? What kind of people are they really? Once the diamond heist fails we get to see each character from a different perspective; under extreme circumstances. That's when you realize that all of these guys are real criminals and things start to spiral out of control as suspicions arise as to who the rat is.
While the movie is ultimately serious and sometimes brutal there are a lot of really funny scenes to contrast this reality with. Like e.g. the scene where all of them get code names assigned to them. Let's just say that Mr. Pink didn't like his code name. I personally think that this scene was one of the funniest movie scenes I've ever seen. Took me totally by surprise because I wasn't expecting this type of witty and hilarious writing.
Reservoir Dogs is still one of my favorite Quentin Tarantino movies of all time. As a matter of fact one might even argue that this is the movie that kick-started his career as we now know it. It has all the Tarantino signature elements. It's super-realistic due to the frequent use of profanity and the setting. A true masterpiece.