Review of Reservoir Dogs (1992) by Matt M — 31 Oct 2013

A cracking directorial debut for Quentin Tarantino, here not only exhibiting his own unique screenwriting talents with sharp and quick witted dialogues but also introducing a characteristic filmmaking post-modernist style, which in Reservoir Dogs particularly pays homage to the French New Wave gangster flicks and Kubrick's The Killing with which it shares the same complex narrative structure.

This is the story of a group of criminals whose plan for a bank robbery goes tits up. This group of characters, who dress the same way and call each other by colours would appear two dimensional yet their ramblings reveal them as original and interesting individual - this factor itself is enough for Tarantino to knock a conventional element of many gangster films that preceded his first feature work.

All this is rounded up by the star studded cast's excellent fun and appropriately colourful performances, out of which the cynic Keitel and the whiny Buscemi particularly shine. From violent to funny, Reservoir Dogs is a brave, violent, funny, entertaining, deeply influential seminal work of the cinema of the nineties.