My Secret Shames: Reservoir Dogs

I'll admit it, this is a strange movie for me not to have seen.  I'd long known that it was one of the most influential films of the 1990s.  It's been called the greatest independent film ever made and, of course, it was the movie that introduced the world to Quentin Tarantino.

But, it came out in 1992 when I was just 14 years old.  And, unless you were really plugged into industry buzz, you didn't really know that this movie existed until you saw Pulp Fiction, Tarantino's follow-up.  I didn't see that movie until 2000 or so, which meant that I basically missed the bus on seeing Reservoir Dogs in anything resembling a timely fashion.

So, in short, I never saw Reservoir Dogs because I was ignorant and never got around to it.  Sue me.



In order to fully appreciate this movie, you really need to keep in the mind the time period in which it came out.  Like Pulp Fiction, this is a movie that succeeds in juxtaposing hilarious dialogue and characterization with horrific acts of violence.  This has since become more common -- in the late 1990s, it was almost a fad.  But, in 1992, people simply weren't accustomed to movies with the darkly comic tone Dogs maintains throughout.

On that score, it's easy to appreciate Reservoir Dogs.  In fact, had I seen this movie when it was first released, I'm quite certain that I would have loved it.  However, when you compare it to Tarantino's subsequent work, this movie really doesn't measure up.

It's probably not fair to judge the movie 20 years after the fact.  But, what're you gonna do?

Tarantino has always been famous for co-opting the styles of other filmmakers and putting his own unique twist on them, usually in the form of dialogue that is rife with tangents and pop culture references.  He was definitely doing that in Reservoir Dogs, taking liberally from Martin Scorsese, among others, and effectively walking the line between homage and imitation.  But, the plot sort of unravels in such a haphazard fashion that it's hardly recognizable as Tarantino, particularly in light of movies like Inglorious Basterds and Kill Bill.

This is forgivable, of course.  This was Tarantino's debut, after all.  Reservoir Dogs certainly hints at the filmmaker's genius that's been celebrated over and over since then.  So, as an artifact of modern film history, it certainly has value.  But, as a standalone movie, it's sloppy and undisciplined and feels more like a first draft of Pulp Fiction than a landmark of independent filmmaking.