RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) movie

Genre              |   Crime Drama

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   99 minutes

Released         |   21 January 1992 

cast

Harvey Keitel ... Mr. White / Larry
Tim Roth ... Mr. Orange / Freddy
Michael Madsen ... Mr. Blonde / Vic Vega
Chris Penn ... Nice Guy Eddie
Steve Buscemi ... Mr. Pink
Lawrence Tierney ... Joe Cabot
Randy Brooks ... Holdaway
Kirk Baltz ... Marvin Nash
Edward Bunker ... Mr. Blue (as Eddie Bunker)
​Quentin Tarantino ... Mr. Brown
​Steven Wright ... K-Billy DJ (voice)

director

Quentin Tarantino

writer

​Quentin Tarantino ... (written by)
 
Quentin Tarantino ... (background radio dialogue written by) and
Roger Avary ... (background radio dialogue written by)

cinematographer

​Andrzej Sekula

music

​Nancy Lynn Hurlbut ... assistant music supervisor
Kathy Nelson ... music supervisor: MCA
Karyn Rachtman ... music supervisor

film editor

​Sally Menke

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​​​​​​2,859,750

Australia                 $​​​​​ not available

North America       $​​​​​​​​2,832,029

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movie minutiae

​Mr. Blonde's (Michael Madsen's) real name is Vic Vega. This is the same surname as Vince (John Travolta) from PULP FICTION (1994). Tarantino has revealed that Vic and Vince are brothers. He also intended to do a prequel to both films called "Double V Vega", which would star the Vega Brothers, but Madsen and Travolta eventually got too old to reprise their roles, and Tarantino has since abandoned it.

​While searching for producers to finance the film and save them from having to make it themselves on a minuscule budget, Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender fielded several offers that sounded good, to but had a catch to them. One producer offered $1.5 million, but only if the ending was changed so that everyone who was dead came back to life, the whole thing having been a hoax or a con of some kind. Another offered $500,000, but only if his girlfriend could play Mr. Blonde. (Bender said it was such a bizarre idea that he and Tarantino actually considered it.)

​The film's budget was so low that many of the actors simply used their own clothing as wardrobe; most notably Chris Penn's track jacket. The signature black suits were provided for free by the designer, based on her love for the American crime film genre. Steve Buscemi wore his own black jeans instead of suit pants.

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related movies

PULP FICTION (1994)

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) MOVIE IMAGES

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RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Six criminals, hired to steal diamonds, do not know each other's true identity. While attempting the heist, the police ambushes them, leading them to believe that one of them is an undercover officer.

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 14 January 2016

​​Pop Movee Rating

​There have been few young filmmakers who have managed to make such an impact with their first feature film than Quentin Tarantino did with RESERVOIR DOGS. Not only did Tarantino manage to break through the Hollywood system without any formal film school training, but the story of how the path he travelled to make his first feature was its own Cinderella story.

Working in a video store, Tarantino schooled himself in film-making by taking scores of VHS tapes home after work and taught himself to do what he was seeing on the screen in front of him.

The first part of his career was in the writing department...

While looking to raise funds for RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino successfully sold TRUE ROMANCE (1993), which went on to be directed by Tony Scott and starred Christian Slater. However, the release of RESERVOIR DOGS, first through the independent film circuit and then on a broader scale after Miramax purchased the distribution rights, saw the film find an audience who were prepared to sing its praises.

The story is about a robbery gone wrong, but Tarantino’s finished version of the movie deconstructs the linear narrative and breaks it into a series of vignettes that move back and forward in time to tell the story of the main characters.

The film opens in a cafe, a group of men, most of them dressed in black suits, sit discussing different subjects; at times cutting across each other’s conversation in an effort to have their point heard. Each man has a code name, with the exception of Joe (Laqrence Tierney) and Eddie (Chris Penn), both of whom the viewer will come to learn are the father and son team behind the Diamond store heist that is the purpose for this group to come together.

Mr. Blue (Tarantino) is holding court with a long-winded explanation of what Madinna’s 1980s hit “Like A Virgin” is really about. Mr.White (Harvey Keitel) is being driven insane by Joe’s incessant rambling about a name in his black book that he can't quite figure out, while Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Orange (Michael Madsen) and Mr. Brown (Tim Roth) interject at various points to have their two cents worth.

The table comes to loggerheads when Pink decides he’s not going to throw-in for a waitress tip at the end of the meal, after Joe has gone to pay the main bill for all of them.

While the conversation may seem trivial, the emphasis Tarantino places on this exchange highlights his deeper concern for the working class; especially women. Despite receiving little credit for gender equity, ever since RESERVOIR DOGS, Tarantino has managed to seed his films with political and social views that are meaningful and bare closer examination.

If his dialogue is the measurement stick, then Tarantino (in spite of his crimson-soaked tales) cares about how the average people within society are treated by those whose posess greater standing.

Beyond the pre-credit opening credit sequence, Tarantino drops the viewer into the carnage that has erupted after the Diamond store heist has gone horribly wrong. White and Brown are speeding away from the scene in a stolen car, but the latter has been badly wounded with a gut shot.

Not until the final minutes of the film is the manner in which Brown was shot revealed, but there’s an irony to him being the one who is wounded in the fashion that he is.

White and Brown are the first to the meeting point, a warehouse in suburban Los Angeles, but White (whose real name we learn from Brown is Larry) knows that his partner-in-crime is going to die if he doesn't receive medical attention.

White and Brown are joined by Pink at the warehouse, who is convinced that someone on the team is an informant. White disagrees, but Pink implores him to stop and think about how so many police were waiting outside the Diamond store as the team were attempting to make their getaway.

The conversation turns to Blonde, who, by all accounts, murdered store staff members after one of them triggered the robbery alarm. Matters soon become heated between White and Pink and the pair turn their weapons on each other.

From the entrance of the warehouse, Blonde watches events unfold and is mildly amused (in a psychotic kind of way) about what he is witnessing. After a heated exchange with White about his conduct at the store, Blonde reveals to both Pink and White that he’s taken a police officer hostage. The three drag the young officer into the warehouse from the trunk of Blonde’s car and start to work him over in the hope he may reveal who the informant is.

Slowly but surely Tarantino gathers his main players on the stage in which their drama wil unfold...

The four remaining surviving team members are joined by Eddie, who has been despatched by his father to start to clean up the mess the bungled job has created. He decides to leave Blonde with the injured Brown and the captured police officer, while him, Pink and White dispose of all the getaway vehicles parked out the front of the warehouse.

In the film’s most memorable sequence, Michael Madsen takes full advantage of the chance Tarantino affords him to exhibit a full array of mentally unhinged character traits, as he tortures Police Officer Marvin with a straight razor; slashing his face and then cutting his ear off to the background music of the Steeler’s Wheel track Stuck In The Middle With You.

Special mention of Steven Wright’s vocal performance at this point. The dry-as-dirt comedian was the perfect choice to be the voice of the disembodied DJ from KBilly’s Sound of the 70s, the fictional radio program that provides the soundtrack for the film. 

Blonde’s sequence ends badly for him as Tarantino allows the other shoe to drop and confirms for the viewer that Pink was correct: there was a police informant on the team, who turns out to be an undercover detective who has been working for an extended period to infiltrate Joe’s organisation.

The script jumps back in time several months and lays out for the viewer the lengths the police have gone to in order to get their man in position. Understanding who the undercover cop is brings everyone’s loyalties into question, as it’s only in the film’s final moments that the character admits his identity.

For viewers looking for a happy ending, RESERVOIR DOGS will disappoint. Even with this first feature film, Tarantino was happy to play against convention and allow circumstance to dictate outcome. Out of all of his films, PULP FICTION (1994) has been the one that is closest to a “happy ending” as Jules and Vincent toddle off in their board shorts and Hawaian shirts (even though we know that Vincent has been gunned down by Buddy at this apartment earlier in the movie). RESERVOIR DOGS makes no such concession.

Tarantino demonstrates through his script that he’s got a gift for writing a certain kind of stylised dialogue that makes criminality seem like an everyday job. What’s more impressive about this film is the certainty he has in his actors and the camera placements he uses to capture his character’s exchanges.

The warehouse scenes are especially impressive as he shoots from long distances, up hallways and across vast open spaces, keeping the camera in the one position the whole time as performances unfurl in front of him. It’s clear how and why RESERVOIR DOGS found favour among the independent scene, as devotees and critics alike must have been impressed how good this guy was; someone who seemed to have just come out of thin air with this incredibly visceral crime film that used paranoia as much as it did guns to create an impact on audiences.

RESERVOIR DOGS is not an “enjoyable” film in the traditional sense. It’s a movie to be enjoyed as an experience in raw film making, with a stripped back story that Tarantino breaks into pieces to make it more complex and mysterious.

The story provides the right level of commentary on matters that are close to the film maker’s heart, but he never engages in flag waving or wearing his heart on his sleeve.

​If Quentin Tarantino had only made this one film, he would have something of which he could be extremely proud. Fortunately, for moviegoers, the former video store employee has pursued his passion for cinema and delivered a series of uniqu, literate, visually arresting movies that never fail to illicit opinion and make us all think about why, whether you love his films or hate them, going to a movie is a wonderous experience!

RESERVOIR DOGS (1992) USEFUL LINKS

Reservoir Dogs - Wikipedia 
​Reservoir Dogs (1992) - IMDb
​Reservoir Dogs (1992) - Rotten Tomatoes

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