director/screenwriter
Quentin Tarantino
producer
Lawrence Bender
cinematographer
Andrzej Sekula
editor
Sally Menke
cast
Harvey Keitel (Mr. White/Larry)
Tim Roth (Mr. Orange/Freddy)
Michael Madsen (Vic Vega)
Chris Penn (Nice Guy Eddie Cabot)
Steve Buscemi (Mr. Pink)
Lawrence Tierney (Joe Cabot)
Randy Brooks (Holdaway)
Kirk Baltz (Marvin Nash)
Edward Bunker (Mr. Blue)
Quentin Tarantino (Mr. Brown)
Steven Wright (K-Billy DJ)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 99m
u.s.
release: 10/23/92
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other quentin
tarantino films
reviewed on this website:
- jackie
brown
- kill
bill: volume 1
- kill bill: volume 2
- pulp
fiction
- true
romance (script only)
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Note: The following is more of an analysis
than a review, written after several video viewings. It was also,
I believe, written a few months before Pulp
Fiction came out. It reads a little too much like a college
paper (I had just recently graduated), but I decided to post
it anyway, as I felt that no film-review site is complete without
a piece on Dogs.
Movie buffs often run into
people who swear they can't sit through a film more than once.
Too many movies, to be certain, aren't worth even one viewing,
but some demand an exception. In 1991 there was The
Silence of the Lambs, and in 1992 there was Reservoir
Dogs, a movie that -- despite its liberal use of the wide
screen, which is mangled on a TV set -- seems perfect for video,
where you can run it again and again. It's not just its quality
that requires multiple viewings; it's the way the plot unfolds.
Making his first movie, the young writer-director Quentin Tarantino
plays with time and space, and part of the excitement is how
he makes everything snap together. What sounds like meaningless
blather about the pros and cons of tipping a waitress turns out
to be the key to understanding a character; shots that seem gratuitous
and show-offy turn out to reveal more than pages of script. Tarantino
is by far a more assured plotter than a director -- which is
saying something, because he's also a purer moviemaker than 80
percent of the competition. His natural mastery of film language
isn't half as exciting as his ability to use it to tell a crackerjack
story. And he's written himself a gem.
In Los Angeles, mob boss Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his
effusive son Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) assemble six thieves
to carry out a jewelry-store heist. So that none of the crooks
will know each other's identities, Joe assigns them color-coded
names. In flashbacks (they're almost like dossiers), Tarantino
gives us what we need to know about three of the thieves. Mr.
White (Harvey Keitel), a veteran with a mild Southern accent,
is the unofficial leader. He and Joe go way back, and Joe picks
him because he's level-headed and experienced. Mr. Blonde (Michael
Madsen) has just been released from prison, where he spent four
years because he refused to snitch on Joe. As payback, Joe and
Eddie cut Mr. Blonde in on the heist. Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) is
a peaceful sort who, when the movie gets underway, is screaming
and bleeding in the back seat of Mr. White's car. The heist,
we learn, has gone bad: There was a shoot-out, precipitated by
the ruthless Mr. Blonde, who lost his cool and started blasting
innocents and cops alike. Two other thieves, Mr. Blue (Eddie
Bunker) and Mr. Brown (Tarantino himself), are killed before
they can make it back to the thieves' planned meeting place at
a warehouse. With the gushing Mr. Orange in tow, Mr. White speeds
back to the warehouse; minutes later, Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi),
a callous, suspicious type, shows up and starts squawking about
"a rat in the house." The cops arrived at the scene
too fast, he argues; they must have been set up. Which of the
thieves is the rat? The plot isn't nearly as linear as I've made
it sound; Tarantino supplies it in gradual dribbles, and there
are surprises -- not just centering on who the rat is.
For a while, Reservoir Dogs seems to dawdle. Mr. White
and Mr. Pink keep snapping at each other while Mr. Orange fades
in and out of consciousness. This minimalist theatre of the absurd
is expertly acted. Tim Roth continues the British tradition of
faking American accents more convincingly than Americans can
fake British accents. In the present-day scenes, he has a reason
to overact; he is, after all, shot in the stomach, which, as
Mr. White helpfully points out, is the most painful place to
take a bullet other than the kneecap. In the flashbacks, Roth
is loose and casual -- in Mr. Orange's words, "supercool."
But mostly he functions as an appreciative listener, and when
he's with Keitel there's definitely something worth listening
to. Keitel (who also coproduced the film) has trouble with his
own accent, but he may be the best macho grandstander in movies.
This former Marine has such physical authority that he never
has to oversell his toughness. Yet he's also funny, as when he
takes Joe's black book away. Berating Joe mildly, as if speaking
to a beloved uncle, Keitel scores a big laugh while never overstepping
Mr. White's bounds with Joe. (Tierney, in his few scenes, is
hilarious.) Keitel's monologue about what to do if the jewelry-store
manager causes trouble is already a classic. Steve Buscemi --
he was Chet the bellboy in Barton
Fink -- oozes untrustworthiness, so it's a central joke
of the movie that he doesn't trust anybody. In a key exchange,
Mr. Pink snaps at Mr. White, "For all I know, you're the
rat." Angered, Mr. White shouts back, "For all I
know, you're the fuckin' rat!" Mr. Pink doesn't take
offense at this: "See, now you're using your head."
To Mr. Pink, everyone's a fuckin' rat. Buscemi is the movie's
cynical voice of reason; he's the type of guy who says things
like "I'm surrounded by idiots."
The funniest performance, though, may well be Tarantino's, though
he only gives himself a few minutes onscreen. As Mr. Brown, a
talkative young thief who will later drive one of the getaway
cars, Tarantino dominates the pre-credits scene with his often-quoted
dissertation on the meaning of Madonna's "Like a Virgin."
He seems ecstatic to be holding forth at a table with some of
his lifelong movie idols (Keitel, Tierney) sitting alongside
him. (If you want to shoot the shit with your matinee heroes,
hire them for your movie.) Tarantino's monologue is aggressive,
profane, and meandering ("What the fuck was I talking about?"),
much like his directorial style. Some may wonder why Tarantino,
having made a vivid impression in the first reel, all but drops
out of the film soon after. But really he doesn't. The first
scene is his signal to us that even off-camera, he's going to
tell stories, make us laugh or cringe, freak us out.
Cosmetically, Reservoir Dogs looks like a macho multiple
orgasm of a film, its characters swapping "fuck you"s
(and then bullets) with absurd relentlessness. (After the fiftieth
"fuck," the word becomes white noise, the way it did
in Scarface, GoodFellas, and Blue Velvet.)
Yet Tarantino sneaks in a tender homosexual subtext, which makes
the macho excesses even funnier. There seems to be more going
on between Mr. White and Mr. Orange than a typical bond between
thieves. The men are opposites in obvious ways (the colors that
serve as their names, their physical builds) and in not-so-obvious
ways (which Tarantino later makes obvious), but what they have
in common is a fundamental decency. Tarantino reveals Mr. White's
compassion early on, when the veteran thief argues for the importance
of tipping waitresses. (He's the only one who sees it as a moral
obligation.) Mr. Orange performs an act of mercy at risk of the
wrath of the other thieves. There is something in Mr. Orange
that draws Mr. White closer. The name Mr. Orange suggests he
may be a different, more humane person underneath his streetwise
exterior, his "peel." Mr. White responds to this --
he wants to peel away his own fake identity and relate to somebody,
anybody, on human terms. Under duress, he tells Mr. Orange his
name (Larry) and where he's from. In movie terms, that's the
start of a beautiful relationship. When Mr. Orange is dying of
a bullet in the gut, Keitel and Roth do their most intimate acting.
On request, Mr. White holds Mr. Orange, comforting him; spontaneously,
he takes out a comb and gently untangles Mr. Orange's sweaty
hair. The scene has an erotic spark that Tarantino doesn't shy
away from. The way Keitel murmurs "You've been brave enough
for one day" has an unmistakable nurturing tone. If Mr.
Orange asked to be tucked in and kissed goodnight, Mr. White
would probably do that, too. Maybe even without being asked.
Of course, this is only possible when no other men are around;
and the joke of this mini-subplot is that these two can only
find intimacy when one of them is on the brink of death and bleeding
buckets.
The clues to the other characters can be found in the names Joe
gives them. I've already discussed Mr. Orange. Mr. White, of
course, is the film's moral (but not always rational) center.
He's not a role model, but in this movie's terms, he's close
to it; he's a professional, not "a fuckin' psychopath"
like Mr. Blonde. That fuckin' psychopath, incidentally, might
take his cue from "Blondes have more fun." Nothing
troubles Mr. Blonde (at least not in the scenes we see; if we
could see his behavior during the heist, we might get a far different
impression). The heist is a game to him, and so is sadism. Preparing
to mutilate a cop, he boogies to the beat of "Stuck in the
Middle with You." He entertains himself and seems almost
hurt that the cop isn't entertained too: How could you not enjoy
being tortured by such a fun guy? (Michael Madsen proves himself
a master at smooth-faced evil; he also proves that evil is most
terrifying when it's soft-spoken.) Mr. Pink, a role Tarantino
originally planned to play, bristles at the homosexual scent
of the name. He's possibly the most cold-blooded of the thieves;
he's no sadist (sadism is a fuckin' waste of time, man,
let's just get the job done), but he lacks ordinary human empathy
-- he's the one who made a big thing about not tipping, and he
doesn't care all that much whether Mr. Orange dies. He's like
a street-punk Mr. Spock: Logic and professionalism are more important
to him than humanity, and he's in it totally for himself. So
his name, which suggests softness and femininity, seems ironic.
Of the two lesser characters, Mr. Brown also balks at his name
("It sounds too much like Mr. Shit"); Mr. Blue's name
may make sense if you know the backstory of the actor who plays
him -- Eddie Bunker, an ex-con who served as this film's consultant
and wrote the book (No Beast So Fierce) on which the excellent
Dustin Hoffman drama Straight Time (about a thief) was
based. The other men are playing veteran hard-asses; Bunker actually
is one. Bunker may have been attracted to this project because
Tarantino turns his tragic theme from Straight Time (thieves
are psychologically incarcerated in or out of jail, helpless
to break their criminal patterns) into black comedy. The central
event in Straight Time, incidentally, was also a botched
jewelry-store heist -- though in that film it was shown in tense
detail, whereas Tarantino keeps his heist on a hearsay level.
For Tarantino, the heist holds less fascination than what happens
before and after.
Critics emphasized what a camera whiz Tarantino is, but as directorial
debuts go, this isn't all that show-offy. He does some smooth
Scorsese pans in the opening scene, and when Mr. Blonde goes
to work on the cop, the camera tilts upward and to the left,
as if it couldn't bear to look. Mostly, I was aware of Tarantino's
superb command of economic craft: Not a shot is wasted. When
Mr. White and Mr. Pink are pointing guns at each other, the camera
pulls back slowly, at length; at first it seems like a self-conscious
visual allusion to how small-minded these hoods are (as well
as a distancing tactic). But the camera, it turns out, is pulling
back to reveal Mr. Blonde, who sucks on a soda and watches the
men with quiet amusement. Suddenly he looms large in the frame,
while the other two look like squabbling insects in the background.
What I consider Tarantino's masterstroke is the men's-room scene.
This is a made-up story told by one of the thieves about the
time he was waiting to sell some weed, went into a bathroom,
and ran into four cops and a pot-sniffing German shepherd. Time
stops as the thief tries to look nonchalant, taking a piss and
washing his hands while the dog barks at his gym bag, which is
full of grass. What's great about the scene is that not only
do you forget it's a flashback -- you forget it's a bullshit
flashback. It seems to be true and happening now, and you find
yourself tensed up and sweating right along with the thief. Tarantino
even pauses to let one of the (fictitious) cops tell a story
about some guy he almost blew away, and you half expect the film
to splinter off and dramatize his story, too.
By this point in the movie, it's clear that Tarantino loves artifice
as much as realism. The script is loaded with pop-culture references:
Music constantly comments on the action (and is also commented
on); at least two characters talk about Charles Bronson; Lee
Marvin, Charlie Chan, John Holmes, Pam Grier, and even the Thing
from the Fantastic Four rate a mention. There's also a nod to
Method acting, a debt to the structure of Stanley Kubrick's The
Killing, and perhaps a titular tip of the hat to Straw
Dogs (nobody can seem to agree on what exactly a "reservoir
dog" is). The cop's mutilation may be a tribute to Blue
Velvet (as well as Un Chien Andalou); the conversation
between Nice Guy Eddie and Mr. Blonde in Joe's office is a better-written
variation on macho rants from a lot of bad prison movies; and
so on.
Reservoir Dogs has its share of obvious humor, mostly
centering on droll throwaways or crude insults. Sometimes the
fierceness and abruptness of the violence is funny; sometimes
it's the single-mindedness of the thieves. (You feel bad for
the woman Mr. Pink yanks from her car, but the desperation of
his action is so perfect that you laugh.) You can't help laughing
during the sickest part of the torture scene, when Mr. Blonde
lifts the severed ear and speaks into it: "Hey, what's goin'
on? Can you hear me?" (I tend to think more people are bothered
by the sight and sound of the torture victim after the fact than
by the actual torture.) Mostly you respond to the sustained tone
of absurdity. As if to underscore the point, Tarantino hired
the master of absurdism to provide running commentary -- Steven
Wright as the laconic DJ of the station that plays "Super
Sounds of the '70s."
The movie keeps building to the ultimate absurdity -- when the
heated exchange of words becomes a crossfire of bullets -- and,
sure enough, it happens, but Tarantino puts a wicked spin on
it. The action is so sudden, so simultaneous, and so defiantly
uninterested in a routine prolonged action-film shootout that
it's hilarious. Tarantino, whose character dies earlier in a
more realistic way, has the last laugh on the other thieves,
which led some critics to peg him as just another hot-shot with
some style and no heart. But he doesn't laugh at the men; he
laughs at their macho code, which depends on the gun and ultimately
can't stand up to the gun. These dogs may finally be all bark
and no bite, but that can't be said of the movie.
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