Movie of the Week: Reservoir Dogs

   

    Movie of the Week (9/15/13-9/21/13): What do you get when you have the mind of Quentin Tarantino? His first movie he wrote, directed, and starred in? The mob genre? And a fantastic cast to add to it? You get a great heist movie that will keep you on the edge of your seat in the last ten minutes or so. I say last ten minutes, but the entire movie is pretty intense but we are not revealed anything, that the characters don't know, until the last few minutes when we have a bunch of people shooting each other. What we have here is classic Tarantino work in Reservoir Dogs.
    This is obviously a crime drama because Quentin Tarantino wrote it and it involves a heist of some diamonds. Six criminals, who don't know each other, are hired by a mob boss to steal some diamonds for him, but things go terribly wrong when the police show up right away. A shootout ensues and the ones that survive meet up at a warehouse where they begin to suspect that one of them is possibly an undercover cop. From there on we are told a story that is not in chronological order and are given clues to the identity of each man that concludes in a gut-wrenching fashion at the end.
    The first thing that makes this movie great is the wonderful casting, I mean I don't think they could have found better actors to portray these characters, some of whom are never given a real name. We have Harvey Keitel as Mr. White, Tim Roth as Mr. Orange, Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink, Edward Butler as Mr. Blue, and Quentin Tarantino himself as Mr. Brown. All of these great actors play the criminals hired to pull off the heist and all deliver groundbreaking performances as each and every one of them control the movie. There is also Lawrence Tierney as Joe Cabot, the man who hired them, and Chris Penn as Eddie Cabot, his son. Both of whom also deliver us powerful performances. This is a great multi-character drama.
    The best thing about this film is the writing, which was obviously done by Quentin Tarantino. He gives us a fairly simple story, but provides a twist to it by telling it in non-chronological order. We also get great dialogue from the script, as you'll see from the opening scene and scenes where they are trying to figure out who the "rat" is. Tarantino closes this film with a great torture and confrontation scene that might have you churning in your seat along with some sweat added in as the "rat" is revealed and we hear noises off screen as the movie come to a screeching halt. Along with his fantastic other writing credits, this one deserved an Oscar nomination as well, but did not get it.
    Since the film is not in chronological order it has some great editing that probably should have been nominated for an Oscar as well, but was not. But nevertheless the editing is Oscar worthy. Tarantino also directed this film, in which he did another wonderful job, if you're a Tarantino fan you know the work he is capable of and this is another list to add to the top. Although it doesn't quite top Pulp Fiction or Django Unchained, it is his third best film and one that will be remembered for it's acting, writing, editing, and direction from a master of the pen that should be doing more films than he does. If you haven't feasted your eyes on this film, I would advise you to do so!
3.5/4 Stars