Best film of all time? ...or not... (Reservoir Dogs (DVD))

Member Name: GR-Design

Product:	Reservoir Dogs (DVD)
Date:	28/10/02 (169 review reads)
Rating:

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Reservoir Dogs, what can you say about a film like this? Thrilling, Disturbing, Comical, Entertaining….I could go on. Reservoir Dogs is a film which isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. It’s a film that not only entertains you right the way through, but also teaches you a thing or two about what can go on in a gang of criminals, the lengths they will go too to save themselves and how each one if there for themselves and themselves only.

Quentin Tarantino is a Director we all know or have heard of. He’s made some pretty good films so far in his career, being not only a director, but appearing in a few of his films too. Reservoir Dogs was his first film and his name went off with a bang! He soon after gave us pulp fiction, but Quentin came from no where, he was a man with an idea and a love for films, and this is what came of that.

The budget for the film was $1.2m. Give a director that these days and he will probably laugh in your face and walk off the set, but Quentin didn’t really need any more than that for what he wanted to do. He just needed a set of actors a couple of places to make the shoots and the normal filming equipment. Oh, and we better not forget the buckets of fake blood and make up artists! I can’t tell you the figures this film made from the box office as I don’t have them to hand, I could make some figures up, but that wouldn’t quite work as well!

Harvey Kietel, one of the actors in the film actually believed so much in the script that he funded part of the movie, putting Quentin and his associates up in US hotels and paying for a weekend of casting out of his own pocket! This is where the other actors, such as the very funny and well known Steve Buscemi came into the equation making the film what it is.

For me, this film wasn’t as good as what some people say it is, which is the reason I gave it 4 stars. Why should it be 5 stars, where does it war
rant 5 stars (I’m sure there are going to be a lot of you out there who could tell me!). There are no huge surprises in the film, no big twists in the plot, no award winning acting roles, no tear jerking, gut wrenching moments. This film doesn’t really have a beginning, middle or an end either, it just seems to go with the flow then ends. Nevertheless, it’s a good film, I enjoyed it every time I saw it and will enjoy it if I view it again, but I just can’t warrant giving this film 5 stars as it just lacked something, for me anyway.

Reservoir Dogs is a film that benefits from repeat viewings. Like ‘The Usual Suspects’, Reservoir Dogs never gets boring. There are not really any slow parts which allow the film to get boring on you, no parts which make you realise just how badly your ceiling needs painting. Every time you see it, you see the film in a different way, maybe the characters in a different way, why should you feel sorry for these people like you might do in the first viewing, these people are criminals. It’s a film that just doesn’t age, and will sit proudly in your DVD collection until the next time you decide on watching it.

So what’s it all about. It’s about 6 criminals who’s task it is to ‘do over’ a diamond shop and escape with a delivery of uncut diamonds. These guys don’t know each other, they have been taken on by mob boss Joe (Lawrence Tierney) and his son Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn). These guys are not allowed to know each others names, if they did, what’s to stop anyone dobbing each other in if a situation gets sticky, if they have someone in the team who might be passing information to outside sources, such as cops then no one knows anybodies names, nor do they know anything about each other, where they come from, their histories etc. They have names of course, Mr White (Harvey Kietel), Orange (Tim Roth), Blonde (Michael Madson), Pink (St
eve Buscemi), Blue (Edward Bunker) and Brown (Quentin Tarantino).

We see the guys getting to ‘know’ each other around a table in a restaurant, the famous opening scene, the next thing we know we are thrown into a scene with Mr White driving a car and Mr Orange in the back with blood everywhere who has been shot in the stomach. We are then introduced to the warehouse and the film has started. We don’t see the actual break in, the crime or much else, we don’t even see much of the getaway. What we do see is how the criminals react after their ‘job’ has gone very, very wrong. Tensions rise, who is the person that set them up, afterall, the cps were there as the alarm went off, people were killed, lots of people, including a couple of the criminals themselves.

For the first two thirds of the film we are thrown into the aftermath of the ‘job gone wrong’. Only then are we really introduced to the characters and how the job and everything else began. Towards the end we see more about the crime itself and then suddenly, it’s finished, I won’t tell you how, but it’s not the greatest of endings it has to be said.

The acting in the film is good, not Oscar winning though, but I doubt you would get that from guys who are acting as criminals. Steve Buscemi is one of my favourite actors and he doesn’t let us down in this film, bringing most of the comedic moments to light and just being the guy who is generally rather funny. Everybody else is good, especially Harvey Kietel who plays his role with an air of easiness about it.

It’s the dialogue that really makes the film what it is, afterall, the lines were used in the ‘Scooby Snacks’ single and it’s great to here those classic quotes again! There is a lot of swearing in the film, but don’t let this put you off, it’s necessary in a film such as this. It’s no good an actor playing a cr
iminal in the middle of a heated scene saying ‘Oh Sugar’ or ‘What the doodley happened there’, it just wouldn’t be right, this is a gangster flick, this is a flick for the big boys, it’s a film that’s in the genre of the godfather and pulp fiction, it’s not for you pansies out there and some of the scenes are quite graphic in their violence and bloodshed.

Even though I have only given it 4 stars and the majority of people would and have given it 5, don’t let this put you off. This is one of those classic films that has just got to be seen, but it’s the lack of power or emotion in the film that prevents me from giving it 5 stars, and I’m not one who’s scared of standing out from the crowd and saying ‘actually, I didn’t think it was that superb’.

It’s definitely recommended, just don’t go into the film expecting something to blow you away, because that’s not what your going to get. Your going to be entertained for 100 minutes though!

It’s got an 18 certificate slapped on the front of the box, and it most definitely deserves it! A film with style!

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