Bold debut.

Rating: 5/10 (26 June 2005)

Halfway through this decade of the new millennium, it might not be a bad idea to go back in time to the Tarantino Decade and weigh in on his debut, *Reservoir Dogs*. A meaningless title, by the way, but it sounds cool -- which can suffice as a succinct summing-up of Tarantino's entire approach to film-making. On the one hand, a true cinephile can hardly despise *Reservoir Dogs*, as it pays fond homage to some pretty great films -- indeed, part of the fun of watching it is calling out your favorite film reference (the most meaty being the torture scene, cribbed -- with updated violence -- from Joseph L. Lewis' *The Big Combo* from 1955). On the other hand, a true cinephile can get pretty irritated with Tarantino for building an entire movie, and indeed an entire CAREER, out of a series of fond homages. Yes, it really is a case of the geek at your local video rental armed with $1.5 million and a camera or two actually making, like, a real movie and stuff. The precocious talent vies with the annoying mannerisms that once compelled you to beat him up after school back in the 4th grade.
Tarantino's biggest claim to originality here (and in his next, more famous, movie) is his willingness to admit the pointlessness of the plot by spending inordinate amounts of time on non-sequitur dialog. The opening riff on the "meaning" of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" remains a startling, funny, and somewhat annoying gambit that attempts to establish character, though the director is far more successful with Mr. Pink's (classic Steve Buscemi) philosophical stance on tipping waitresses. The lackadaisical, wandering pop-culture commentary throughout the film certainly adds some precise verisimilitude, even as it obfuscates what is really a much-ado-about-nothing story involving a gangs of criminals knocking over a jewelry store. Tarantino seems to instinctively know that he doesn't have a great plot going on, so he tries to distract us further with a non-linear narrative pertaining to the undercover cop (an unconvincing Tim Roth) who has infiltrated the crew. Tarantino commits a huge plot gaffe by having his criminals eat in a diner dressed in the very conspicuous clothes -- black suits & ties with white shirts -- they'll later wear while robbing the jewelry store. (This is a case where an "homage" undercuts the legitimacy of the story.) There's also the lack of sureness about camera placement that you'd expect from a first-timer: the camera tends to wander off for no particular reason, or to sit about a million miles away from the action or a character without adding any necessary ancillary details.
The best acting job in the film is delivered by a fellow named Kirk Baltz, who plays an LAPD beat cop who has been kidnapped by Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde during the bloody aftermath of the heist and is taken to the thieves' warehouse-hideout. Mr. Baltz adds some shocking humanity to the proceedings: when he tells the sadistic Mr. Blonde that he has a kid (an improvised piece of dialog, according to IMDb's trivia-sheet), the stakes are definitely raised. The rest of his performance is a disturbing delineation of a man being tortured. Meanwhile, Madsen's character tells Baltz, "I don't really care what you tell me -- I've heard it all before. I'm not torturing you to get information; I'm torturing you because it amuses me to torture a cop." These frightening moments, played over the pleasant nonsense of Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You", make *Reservoir Dogs* seem strangely up-to-the-minute in ways Tarantino had never envisioned. This movie has suddenly become mandatory viewing for those who subscribe to the notion that our current "enemies" are having a gay old time down there in Gitmo.
As for the rest it, Harvey Keitel and Lawrence Tiereny add much-needed heft and legitimacy to a movie that desperately needs it. I also liked all the blood in the film -- movie violence is too often sanitary; Tarantino makes it disturbingly and copiously wet. What WASN'T required, however, was the constant use of the "N-word" by the characters. Perhaps this can be argued as being realistic palaver, given the milieu, but I get the feeling Tarantino is merely trying to add a little extra shock-value, here. Or perhaps he feels that a lifelong obsession with Pam Greer gives him the credentials to use that word with impunity. Well, it doesn't.
For the under-25's, I strongly recommend *Reservoir Dogs* -- see what the fuss was all about. For those of us who were there the first time, a solid 5 stars out of 10, modified by the sad knowledge that Quentin eventually grew up to make bad kung-fu movies.