Brilliant debut film from Tarantino

Rating: 10/10 (15 February 2015)

Reservoir Dogs is of course the film that made Quentin Tarantino overnight. It was something of a sensation back in the day and with good reason. Despite having a plot-line that was seemingly very derivative of an earlier Hong Kong crime flick, it was nevertheless an extremely fresh approach that Tarantino brought to the movies. He impressively went one better with his next feature Pulp Fiction but irrespective of that, Reservoir Dogs will always be regarded as one of the great debut features. Its influence was huge and many crime flicks followed its lead and featured wise-cracking bad guys and pop cultural references. The story focuses on a group of colour-coded thieves before and after a disastrous heist. They meet up at a prearranged rendezvous point at a warehouse and accusations begin to fly. Some are convinced it was a set-up, while the waters are muddied further by one of the team acting psychotically on the job. One spends the entire film bleeding to death and whose background story forms a key part of the plot.
The manner in which the film is constructed is one of its greatest strengths. The drama flashes backwards and forwards and in doing so layers are added and gradually truths emerge. In taking this approach Tarantino masterfully controls and heightens the tension. The very fact he has devised a heist movie which features everything but the heist itself, shows serious confidence. The cast is quite brilliant with Lawrence Tierney as a very convincing crime boss, Harvey Keitel as a career criminal, Tim Roth as the rookie he has to train and possibly the most central character in the film (he is good although his American accent is sometimes a bit ropey), Steve Buscemi puts in a star-making turn as a cynical but clear-headed wise-guy, Michael Madsen is authentically scary as the psychopathic member of the group, real-life ex-con Eddie Bunker has a small role but looks the part , Chris Penn is extremely naturalistic as the crime bosses son Nice Guy Eddie and Tarantino himself is actually pretty good (for once) as the unfortunate Mr Brown.
But it's as a writer and director that Tarantino is best and Reservoir Dogs shows himself clearly at the top of his game. Characters often pause to discuss all manner of tangential, trivial everyday things. He uses many very long takes which in the wrong hands will slow down the pace of a movie but here only heighten the tension and bring out the drama more. His gift for dialogue is pretty self-evident, with fantastically authentic sounding words coming out of these gangster's mouths. The writing really is fabulous and extremely funny a lot of the time. I also remember when it was released it attracted a lot of media attention for how extremely violent it was. While it certainly is to an extent it also can be compared to the Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) where you swear you have seen a lot more than you actually have. Again, this is testament to the skill in which Tarantino tackles his material. Overall, Reservoir Dogs is rightfully regarded as one of the classics of its genre and, in my opinion, after Pulp Fiction, the best thing Tarantino has ever did.