Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick:
Reservoir Dogs is such a pronounced declaration of Quentin Tarantino’s voice as a filmmaker that his is literally the first voice you hear in the film, his on-camera alter ego Mr. Brown holding court over the phallic implications of Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ in the film’s iconic opening diner sequence.
From the diner scene to the torture scene to the code-name scene to the final Mexican standoff, Reservoir Dogs is loaded with sequences and lines that continue to hold an iconic place in Tarantino’s long and controversial career.
Tarantino famously wrote the script while still working as a video store clerk, intending at one point to finance a very low budget version financed entirely by the sale of the True Romance script to Tony Scott. Scott initially wanted to direct Reservoir Dogs, but Tarantino clung to the film as his intended directorial debut (not counting a never-finished short, My Best Friend’s Birthday, most of which was lost in a fire). The project’s profile rose significantly when Harvey Keitel, on something of a hot-streak after Bugsy and Thelma and Louise, got his hands on the script and asked to get involved.
Reservoir Dogs wasn’t quite the cultural phenomenon that Pulp Fiction would prove to be, but it vaulted Tarantino to the forefront of the burgeoning indie cinema landscape, both championed and derided for the style and excess of his work. The film significantly raised the profiles of young actors Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth, and led to a brief resurgence for old school gangster movie fixture Lawrence Tierney, the first of many times that Tarantino would resuscitate a faded star back to prior glory.
This past week brought us a new Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As has now become standard, the film has inspired both intense devotion and no small shortage of outrage.
By all accounts, we are far nearer the finish of Quentin Tarantino’s career as a feature film writer-director than we are the beginning, so let’s flash back to those halcyon days of 1992, when all you needed to shock your way into cinematic immortality was a burly guy in a suit, a razor blade, and K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the ’70s.
Next Week’s Pick:
In one of the obvious and yet unlikely adaptations of children’s literature, Alvin Schwartz’s controversial horror tales collected in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which delighted and terrified kids in the 80s and 90s, makes its way to screens under the direction of Two Cents alum André Øvredal (TrollHunter). In honor of his return, we’re diving into his prior film, the acclaimed but somewhat passed-over The Autopsy of Jane Doe. about a father-son team of coroners who find that this particular autopsy has some spooky surprises in store. Catch it streaming on Netflix!
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.coanytime before midnight on Thursday!
The Team
I’ve been hit or miss on the works of Quentin Tarantino for years, though I’ve become quite a fan of his later era films. Thinking back on his earlier work, I don’t love any of the films up to and including Kill Bill. I admit, though, that I need to revisit most of them — seeing as I’ve not watched most of them in years, Reservoir Dogs included.
While I’ve never disliked this one, but I’ve never loved it either. With this rewatch — the first in at least a decade — I still don’t love it, but I definitely think I appreciate it more than before. Notably, it’s a damned acting clinic. Keitel, Buscemi, Roth, Madsen, all fucking brilliant. Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, stellar performances. Make no mistake, this really is a full on clinic.
The film itself isn’t necessarily my thing though… and the dialogue is often unnatural and clunky. The dialogue suffers from a seeming desire to be extremely cool and edgy in a way that Tarantino’s later work doesn’t — including the least natural or necessary use of the the “N” word in all of Tarantino’s work. Whereas it feels appropriate in several other Tarantino films, it feels shoehorned in here.
In the end, I get why people love this one, but I’d rather throw on Basterds or Django again than spend any more time with it. Maybe I’ll give it another go in a decade or so. (@thepaintedman)
If Reservoir Dogs sits near the bottom of my personal ranking of Tarantino films, it’s a testament more to just how excellent the man’s output has steadily been for nigh-on 30 years than it is a comment on Reservoir Dogs’ overall quality. Because make no mistake: This is an exceptional little thriller, with a script that is down-right musical in its swirling vortexes of profanity, machismo, and pop culture-soaked banter. Even as a first time director, Tarantino’s command over the camera is impressive, ever-present as it gooses the tension and lures you into the palm of the film’s hand, but not so ostentatious that it detracts from the rhythm of the language and the performances.
The only place where Tarantino’s newcomer status is somewhat apparent is in those performances. For the most part, everyone does commendable work, from the old pros to the young guns to the folks that didn’t seem to go anywhere or do much after this movie, (pour one out for Kirk Baltz) but there are places where many in the cast fall into the trap of “IF I SCREAM MY LINES THAT COUNTS AS GOOD ACTING, RIGHT?” none more so than Keitel, who yells and spits and flails his arms about like he’s turning hard into the skid of the script’s stage-bound nature and playing to the far back row. It’s all worth it for that last stretch of the movie, still to this day the cruelest, most pitiful climax Tarantino has ever offered up. There’s no hope, no bitter light peering through the clouds. Just doomed men pushing each other closer and closer towards that doom until there’s nothing to do but howl over how bad you let things get. (@theTrueBrendanF)
For me, Reservoir Dogs has always shared the bottom rung with Death Proof as my least favorite Tarantino film, and the only one I’ve never felt compelled to rewatch in the fifteen years since my original viewing. While the rest of his films (excepting, perhaps, The Hateful Eight) tend to have sense of spirited wackiness, Reservoir Dogs is meaner and more grounded. A great film, yes, but also a decidedly unpleasant one.
Still, we can see a lot of QT’s emergent style already coming into focus: dialogue focuses on pop culture, engaging and disarming audience unexpectedly (at the time). Key homages pay tribute to Kansas City Confidential and City on Fire. Diagetic radio and the sounds of the 70s inform the musical experience. Title cards and flashbacks interrupt the present narrative, filling in exposition and reminding viewers that they’re watching a movie — and damn it, there’s nothing wrong with that.
On this rewatch, I was definitely more in tune with the vibe, understanding its place in both cinematic history and QT’s filmography. All great artists start somewhere, and this is a hell of an entrance. (Austin Vashaw)
Next week’s pick: