A Bleak and Disturbing Film from a Treasured Director.

Rating: 7/10 (23 March 2004)

** / **** Reservoir Dogs is an interesting beginning to one of America's finest filmmakers careers. I loved Pulp Fiction in so many ways but most of which came from the last 15 minutes of the film in which we understand Samuel L. Jackson's journey in the film. It is that quality that is missing in Reservoir Dogs that, in my opinion, is the film's failing. The film is nothing but graphic pain and violence. There is nothing to endear any of the characters to us (unless you are endeared to people that like to mutilate people to hip 70's tunes). The characters have no real journey. The dialog is inventive (as we expect from Tarantino) but the plot is not. It's about violence for the sake of shocking the audience. It's disturbing in the ways that a horror film is disturbing without the payoff in the end. The film is extremely popular and that disturbs me more than the film itself.