Movie Title: Reservoir Dogs
Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, Randy Brooks, Kirk Baltz, Edward Bunker, Quentin Tarantino
Review: Six criminals (Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Edward Bunker, Quentin Tarantino) with pseudonyms, and each strangers to one another, are hired to carry out a robbery. The heist is ambushed by police and the gang are forced to shoot their way out. At their warehouse rendezvous, the survivors and those that hired them (Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney), realizing that they were set up, try to find the traitor in their midst.
Reservoir Dogs is the first film directed by the legendary influential filmmaker, Quentin Tarantino. This film is different than many of the Tarantino films that succeeded it. With a basic, plain location, and a minuscule budget in comparison to his other films, Reservoir Dogs manages to excel in developing enigmatic characters and a wealth of action that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Although a runtime under two hours is unheard of nowadays for a Tarantino film, I actually appreciated the quick pacing here. This movie is straight and to the point with very little filler. We meet all the characters in the first scene, and as the movie progresses, all the major characters get their time to shine and develop. Accompanying the characters, are a bunch of shootouts, torture scenes, and craziness as the Reservoir Dogs gang tries to find out which one of them is the narc. While I hold several of his other movies in higher regard, any fan of Tarantino needs to see this film; the one that essentially started the career of Quentin as we now know him!
Fun Fact: The budget was so low that many of the actors simply used their own clothing as wardrobe; most notably Chris Penn's track jacket. The suits were also provided for free by the designer. The budget also wouldn't cover police assistance for traffic control, so in the scene where Steve Buscemi forces a woman out of her car, he could only do so when the lights were green.