A modern master's flawless debut

Rating: 10/10 (23 October 2005)

Pulp Fiction made him a worldwide phenomenon, but it was the very first screening of Reservoir Dogs, his directorial debut, at Sundance in 1992, that proved Quentin Tarantino, a former video store clerk with no formal training behind the camera (except for a failed experiment called My Best Friend's Birthday), was a force to be reckoned with: mixing Sergio Leone, the French New Wave and Asain thrillers in the same package (and adding a lot more on the way), his first feature doesn't boast that much originality, but it has energy, passion, violence and wit.
Ostensibly a classic heist flick, Dogs is about a bunch of criminals who are brought together by the edgy Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) to perform an apparently flawless robbery. These people have no real names, at least not when they're together: job-wise, they will just be known as Mr. White (Harvey Keitel, one of the driving forces behind this film's making), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker), Mr. Brown (QT himself) and Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi). With some minor help from Joe's son "Nice Guy" Eddie (Chris Penn), things should go smoothly.
Obviously, they don't: by the time the opening credits are over, we know the job went wrong, as the surviving "dogs" (including a seriously injured Orange) gather in a warehouse and try to figure out what happened. Through a clever use of non-linear narrative, we learn how they were approached by Joe, the aftermath of the heist (the robbery itself is never depicted on-screen) and their suspicions regarding a potential undercover cop in the group.
The storytelling technique is obviously borrowed from Jean-Luc Godard, who famously said: "A film should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order" (coincidentally, QT's production company, A Band Apart, is also named after one of Godard's movies). The plot, however, is the smallest of Tarantino's concerns. What really matters here is the execution, the style. And what a style: the seamless merger of images and music (see the opening credits), with the additional brilliant idea of having virtually all the songs (no original tunes here) come from an internal source, namely a radio program, the Scorsese-inspired long takes, the innovative use of violence (excessive but often amusing, rather than revolting, as in the famous torture scene).
And then, of course, there's the dialogue, the primary reason to watch any of Tarantino's films. The audience at Sundance was memorably shocked by the opening sequence, which explains nothing about the story but gives precious insight regarding the characters: Mr. White has a short temper, Mr. Pink doesn't believe in tipping and Mr. Brown is firmly convinced Madonna's "Like A Virgin" has a pretty crude significance (in true QT style, the language is not something the easily offended will embrace). That's just one of many quotable sound-bites, which also showcase the talent of Tarantino's ensemble cast: the standouts are Keitel, Roth and the psychotic Madsen, but everyone, even Bunker, whose role is - on the surface - less prominent, gets a well deserved moment of screen immortality.
The cast (Keitel most notably) is also further proof of how Reservoir Dogs doesn't "look" like a traditional '90s first feature. Unlike Clerks, which was deliberately constructed like a home-made extravaganza, Dogs never flaunts its small scale or limited locations (the bulk of the movie takes place in the warehouse). It's a little movie that thinks big, and the Weinstein brothers were clever enough to see it in 1992, when they bought the film and gave Tarantino free reins to do whatever the hell he wanted after that. The rest, as they say, is recent motion picture history.