Reservoir Dogs
When I saw Pulp Fiction, I walked out of the movie theater agog. I had witnessed a movie masterpiece that so proficiently weaved all of its elements together that it left me floored. I had never seen anything like it before.
Of course, I've since seen a lot more movies, including Tarantino's most recent Kill Bill series. Although flashes of brilliance are evident in his other films, Pulp Fiction was the maturation of themes he was clearly still tinkering with in Reservoir Dogs. But that does not diminish the tightly plotted beauty of Tarantino's first film.
Tarantino wisely created his film like he would a play, which forces more character interaction and less gun battles. Indeed, the actors must, you know, ACT and tell us the story that we don't see on screen. The movie also introduces the characters as complete strangers by giving each one a nickname. Thus, as they are strangers to each other, they are strangers to us.
These strangers have been assembled by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) to pull off a simple heist. The fatherly Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), the reserved Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), the coolly psychopathic Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), the calculating weasel known as Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), and two guys who die early in the movie, Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino in his usual cameo role) and Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker). This ragtag team of strangers are led by Joe Cabot's son, "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot (Chris Penn), sporting a blue jumpsuit like any good Mob goomba would wear. All of the other thugs wear black suits and sunglasses to make them difficult to distinguish to witnesses.
We never see the actual bank heist, which is part of the fun. Instead, it is told through the eyes of the characters, both in dialogue and through flashbacks identifying each of their backgrounds. The twist is that the bank heist has gone horribly awry and thus our rainbow colored team must rendezvous at a warehouse. In play-like fashion, the majority of the conversations and action takes place in this one location.
But what went wrong? It doesn't take long for the calculating Mr. Pink (who hates his name), to determine that there's a rat amongst them, and it's not until the latter half of the film that the plot is revealed as to which character is an undercover cop. Thus the characters begin their own witch-hunt, struggling to determine whom they can and cannot trust.
Things are complicated by Mr. White's loyalty to Mr. Orange, who has been shot in the stomach. A thief with honor, Mr. White treats Mr. Orange like his child, and it's only through deleted scenes that we discover Mr. White has been horribly betrayed before. Indeed, this is the second attempt at a bank heist, the first having gone equally wrong. Mr. White thus feels at least partially responsible for the younger man's agony.
And how agonizing it is! Mr. Orange bleeds. And bleeds. And bleeds. Indeed, for most of the film, he bleeds, screams, or is unconscious. It is a tribute to Roth's acting ability that he makes it look so painful.
On the other side of the moral spectrum is Mr. Blonde, a killing machine. Having been imprisoned for years and never ratting on his employers, Mr. Blonde is alternately the ideal soldier and a terrifying thug, capable of the most brutal acts. Mr. Blonde vents his anger by taking a cop hostage, whom he graphically tortures off-screen-not to get the cop to reveal who the snitch is, but because "it's amusing, to me, to torture a cop." And after all that, the startling truth is the cop DOES know who the snitch is.
At heart, this movie is about honor, whether amongst thieves or cops. The "rat" kills people in his undercover role, as much a villain as he pretends to be. The stone-cold killer amongst the thieves is the most honorable, while the tortured cop is willing to die to protect the life of the snitch. And through it all, Mr. White does his level best to save Mr. Orange, a man he barely knows. The final twist in the end reveals who played who and in Shakespearean fashion leaves just about everybody dead. The twist isn't in the deaths as much as it is in the revelation: the honor between men who have risked their lives for each other and in doing so, willing place their lives in the other's hands.
The acting in the movie is superb. Keitel, who produced the movie, knew what he was getting into and is the star of the show. He expresses a full range here, from that of a sniggering thug to a fatherly protector to a weeping brother. Buscemi is calculating and freaked-out in his usual bug-eyed staccato-speak. Madsen is cool as ice and puts his cold-dead gaze to good use without over-emoting. When he dances to "Stuck in the Middle With You" as he tortures the cop, it's a devil's dance that is horrifying as it is cheesy.
Tarantino's voice comes through strongly in all of the dialogue, sometimes too strongly (in the interviews, he actually says he has a "God given gift for dialogue," which is a little too complimentary in my opinion). All the characters seem to elucidate and expound on everything at length in a way that sounds just like how Tarantino speaks. Fortunately, all the actors are up to the task-Buscemi can handle it easily, Keitel less so, and Madsen doesn't really need to speak at all (for an example of an actor having difficulty with Tarantino-speak, see Uma Thurman in Kill Bill). Still, the dialogue is engaging and amusing, and it established a distinct narrative voice that has marked all of Tarantino's films.
For all of Tarantino's genius in pulling this movie off as his entrance to cinema, the film loses some of its luster by failing to acknowledge its roots. The naming of characters by colors to keep their identities anonymous and the undercover cop twist was done first in the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. But most egregiously, the movie has several shot-by-shot parallels with Chow Yun Fat's City on Fire. To be fair, George Lucas doesn't often admit any inspiration from Hidden Fortress or The Searchers...but the similarities between Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire are so close as to be outright criminal in not recognizing them.
With the advent of Reservoir Dogs, traditional cinema, with "thugs sitting around polishing their bullets" got a strong slap of pathos if not realism. While not technically as proficient as Pulp Fiction, it stands as a precursor of Tarantino's skill as a writer, director, and actor.
Okay maybe not as an actor.
Of course, I've since seen a lot more movies, including Tarantino's most recent Kill Bill series. Although flashes of brilliance are evident in his other films, Pulp Fiction was the maturation of themes he was clearly still tinkering with in Reservoir Dogs. But that does not diminish the tightly plotted beauty of Tarantino's first film.
Tarantino wisely created his film like he would a play, which forces more character interaction and less gun battles. Indeed, the actors must, you know, ACT and tell us the story that we don't see on screen. The movie also introduces the characters as complete strangers by giving each one a nickname. Thus, as they are strangers to each other, they are strangers to us.
These strangers have been assembled by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) to pull off a simple heist. The fatherly Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), the reserved Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), the coolly psychopathic Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), the calculating weasel known as Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), and two guys who die early in the movie, Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino in his usual cameo role) and Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker). This ragtag team of strangers are led by Joe Cabot's son, "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot (Chris Penn), sporting a blue jumpsuit like any good Mob goomba would wear. All of the other thugs wear black suits and sunglasses to make them difficult to distinguish to witnesses.
We never see the actual bank heist, which is part of the fun. Instead, it is told through the eyes of the characters, both in dialogue and through flashbacks identifying each of their backgrounds. The twist is that the bank heist has gone horribly awry and thus our rainbow colored team must rendezvous at a warehouse. In play-like fashion, the majority of the conversations and action takes place in this one location.
But what went wrong? It doesn't take long for the calculating Mr. Pink (who hates his name), to determine that there's a rat amongst them, and it's not until the latter half of the film that the plot is revealed as to which character is an undercover cop. Thus the characters begin their own witch-hunt, struggling to determine whom they can and cannot trust.
Things are complicated by Mr. White's loyalty to Mr. Orange, who has been shot in the stomach. A thief with honor, Mr. White treats Mr. Orange like his child, and it's only through deleted scenes that we discover Mr. White has been horribly betrayed before. Indeed, this is the second attempt at a bank heist, the first having gone equally wrong. Mr. White thus feels at least partially responsible for the younger man's agony.
And how agonizing it is! Mr. Orange bleeds. And bleeds. And bleeds. Indeed, for most of the film, he bleeds, screams, or is unconscious. It is a tribute to Roth's acting ability that he makes it look so painful.
On the other side of the moral spectrum is Mr. Blonde, a killing machine. Having been imprisoned for years and never ratting on his employers, Mr. Blonde is alternately the ideal soldier and a terrifying thug, capable of the most brutal acts. Mr. Blonde vents his anger by taking a cop hostage, whom he graphically tortures off-screen-not to get the cop to reveal who the snitch is, but because "it's amusing, to me, to torture a cop." And after all that, the startling truth is the cop DOES know who the snitch is.
At heart, this movie is about honor, whether amongst thieves or cops. The "rat" kills people in his undercover role, as much a villain as he pretends to be. The stone-cold killer amongst the thieves is the most honorable, while the tortured cop is willing to die to protect the life of the snitch. And through it all, Mr. White does his level best to save Mr. Orange, a man he barely knows. The final twist in the end reveals who played who and in Shakespearean fashion leaves just about everybody dead. The twist isn't in the deaths as much as it is in the revelation: the honor between men who have risked their lives for each other and in doing so, willing place their lives in the other's hands.
The acting in the movie is superb. Keitel, who produced the movie, knew what he was getting into and is the star of the show. He expresses a full range here, from that of a sniggering thug to a fatherly protector to a weeping brother. Buscemi is calculating and freaked-out in his usual bug-eyed staccato-speak. Madsen is cool as ice and puts his cold-dead gaze to good use without over-emoting. When he dances to "Stuck in the Middle With You" as he tortures the cop, it's a devil's dance that is horrifying as it is cheesy.
Tarantino's voice comes through strongly in all of the dialogue, sometimes too strongly (in the interviews, he actually says he has a "God given gift for dialogue," which is a little too complimentary in my opinion). All the characters seem to elucidate and expound on everything at length in a way that sounds just like how Tarantino speaks. Fortunately, all the actors are up to the task-Buscemi can handle it easily, Keitel less so, and Madsen doesn't really need to speak at all (for an example of an actor having difficulty with Tarantino-speak, see Uma Thurman in Kill Bill). Still, the dialogue is engaging and amusing, and it established a distinct narrative voice that has marked all of Tarantino's films.
For all of Tarantino's genius in pulling this movie off as his entrance to cinema, the film loses some of its luster by failing to acknowledge its roots. The naming of characters by colors to keep their identities anonymous and the undercover cop twist was done first in the Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. But most egregiously, the movie has several shot-by-shot parallels with Chow Yun Fat's City on Fire. To be fair, George Lucas doesn't often admit any inspiration from Hidden Fortress or The Searchers...but the similarities between Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire are so close as to be outright criminal in not recognizing them.
With the advent of Reservoir Dogs, traditional cinema, with "thugs sitting around polishing their bullets" got a strong slap of pathos if not realism. While not technically as proficient as Pulp Fiction, it stands as a precursor of Tarantino's skill as a writer, director, and actor.
Okay maybe not as an actor.
posted by talien | 12:47 PM
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