A couple of nights ago I saw an interview with Quentin
Tarantino on Film 2013 ahead of the
release of his latest picture Django
Unchained. The interview touched upon a lot of his films and with each film
mentioned I turned to my girlfriend and said “Ooh! I really want to watch that
again soon” while turning to my DVD shelf. When Reservoir Dogs was mentioned I looked for my DVD copy and suggested
we watched it that night but my girlfriend told me that it was playing for one
night only at our local multiplex the next evening. Five minutes later the
tickets were booked and my excitement grew as I was getting the chance to see
such an iconic film on the big screen, twenty-one years after its release. Reservoir Dogs burst on to the scene in
late 1992 and unusually went on to make more money at the UK box office than in
the US but following the release of Pulp
Fiction two years later became more widely known and is today recognised as
one of the greatest independent films of all time as well as one of the
greatest debuts by any film maker.
Featuring a lot of the themes which define Tarantino’s
filmography such as a non-linear story, extreme violence, pop culture
references, rock and pop soundtrack, rich and deeply woven dialogue and a plot
based around an accident, Reservoir Dogs
takes place before and after an armed robbery orchestrated by Joe Cabot
(Lawrence Tierney) and his son ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie (Chris Penn). We see various
meetings and discussions which take place before the heist as the crew is slowly
formed but the most famous and memorable scenes take place following the
robbery when the various members of the group make their way back to their safe
house. The audience never sees the robbery itself but with some of the gang
dead and others badly wounded it is soon obvious that something went wrong and
that they have a rat in their midst, but who?
