Movie Report: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

I got this film in February, and I popped it in because my oldest, who now has a job, income, and–from his perspective–everything one needs to be an adult so he can’t wait to move out and not have to clean his room–has gotten himself a Netflix subscription and is catching up on all the R-rated movies I’ve missed. Like this one.

I have to admit that I’m not much of a Tarentino fan. I mean, I’ve seen Pulp Fiction, and I’ve seen From Dusk til Dawn. The only movie that I’ve enjoyed enough to rewatch is Jackie Brown. Come to think of it, this means I’ve seen his first four films (this was his first) and nothing after. I rented Kill Bill Volume 1 back when I had a video store membership, but I didn’t make it past the opening titles, or maybe the pre-title narration in the dark. I thought, “I don’t have to watch this brutality,” and I ejected the DVD and returned it unwatched (at $.50 a rental, I did that a couple of times with other films). But some years later, and having watched this film, I wonder how inured I have become to brutality in film–I remember thinking the most recent Conan revival wasn’t that bad. So maybe I will take a flyer on Kill Bill some other time.

But that’s a long digression.

The critic hearken this film back to noir thrillers from the olden days, and I can see it, albeit it’s in color and the actual cinematography doesn’t capture that. Instead, it reminds me a little more of the old black-and-white films which were quite clearly adopted from a play. After all, the film takes place in a single location, a “warehouse” that looks more like it would have been a garage, with only some other locations appearing through flashback.

At any rate, for those of you not familiar with the plot, a local crime figure has gathered a number of crime specialists to do a diamond heist. The first bit of the film takes place in a diner before the job. But then we switch to the warehouse after the job has gone bad–the police were apparently waiting for them. One of the bad guys has been gutshot and is brought in by a strongarm man who has befriended or befathered him in spite of the rules. Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink arrives and says that someone was a fink. That’s the basics. We get flashbacks from some of the main characters telling both how the robbery went wrong and how they prepared for it, and we find out fairly early who the undercover policeman is but have to wonder what will become of him.

There’s a brief torture scene–my beautiful wife said I’d never hear Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” the same way, but watching this film must have been her first and formative experience with the song and not mine, so it won’t affect my appreciation of Gerry Rafferty–and there’s a Mexican standoff and some amibuity in the end.

So it was not as brutal as I thought (although that might be me watching the film 30 years later–maybe it was indeed brutal for its time). An okay movie, but not necessarily something I’ll rewatch a bunch. It does make me want to rewatch Jackie Brown, though. For the Pam Grier, certainly, but also because it introduced me to Bobby Womack, whose CDs and records I’ve since acquired when I can.