Rob’s Retro Review: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

When Kid 1 was in town last week, he informed me that he’d watched Pulp Fiction recently and loved it. As such, I decided to bring some father-son bonding time to the holidays by introducing him to Tarantino’s first feature-length movie, Reservoir Dogs.

The story behind the creation of Reservoir Dogs is something of indie film legend today. Tarantino was working at a video store in California when he and producer Lawrence Bender planned to make the film themselves. According to film lore, Bender showed the script to his acting teacher, whose wife then gave it to actor Harvey Keitel. Keitel loved the script and agreed to star in and co-produce the film. Approaching a studio as an unknown filmmaker with a script Harvey Keitel had already signed onto significantly increased the likelihood of the movie getting financed.

The plot

The story involves a jewelry heist gone wrong. Keitel stars as part of an ensemble cast that includes a ragtag collection of crooks, all hired by gang leader Joe (Lawrence Tierney). The plan is so well-executed—yet fails so spectacularly—that Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) correctly assumes there must be a “rat” among the ranks. Much of the film’s action involves the aftermath of the heist, trying to figure out what went wrong and determining who the mole is.

The movie famously doesn’t show the actual jewelry heist. Instead, it shows bits of the chaos and picks up with the crooks meeting at their rendezvous point—an abandoned warehouse. In typical Tarantino style, much of the story is told through flashbacks, giving us background on each character and setting the stage for the inevitable robbery.

My Take

I love Reservoir Dogs. I saw it a few months after seeing Pulp Fiction back in 1994. At that point, Quentin Tarantino was one of the most groundbreaking writer-directors in Hollywood, and like many fans, I was just hungry for more of his work.

Reservoir Dogs was really the first movie to introduce many of the now-famous Tarantino tropes: character development through mundane small talk, excessive profanity, almost comical violence, and, of course, his knack for non-linear storytelling. All of these elements were present here, two years before Pulp Fiction was released.

FINAL TAKE:

I would absolutely, positively recommend Reservoir Dogs to fans of independent films, “cops and robbers” stories, and whodunits. If you consider yourself a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work, you owe it to yourself to watch this if you haven’t already. So many of the classic “Tarantino-isms” are on display here for the first time. Beyond that, it’s just a good movie. Yes, there’s a lot of profanity and blood—almost a comical amount—but not quite as much as you’d see in his later works. In fact, I consider Reservoir Dogs to be the perfect gateway into the Tarantino filmography.

I’ll let you decide for yourself if you want to make Reservoir Dogs a part of your family’s annual holiday viewing!

Reservoir Dogs is currently available on demand

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