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Reservoir Dogs - (Mr. Orange) 10th Anniversary Special Limited Edition

Reservoir Dogs - (Mr. Orange) 10th Anniversary Special Limited Edition

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Shouldn't be missed by film fans...
Review: While opinions seem to vary widely on this movie (and the entire QT catalog for that matter), Reservoir Dogs is certainly a movie that comes up when you start talking about films that changed the rules and challenged the audience. The movie is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those short on patience. It requires your full attention, pushes and pulls you in directions you don't expect and forces you WAY out of your comfort zone.

And I'm not just talking about the violence. The non-sequential structure of the film can be difficult to track, the emotional reactions of the characters are far from ordinary, and there is little "Hollywood-style" storytelling to it at all. In short, it's the anti-chick-flick...

But it is still an essential film for those who consider themselves film junkies. The modern-day "independent film" boom (which many would say has been commercialized in its own way) owes a great deal to movies like this, as well as sex, lies & videotape and many others.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Repulsive at best
Review: Having previously purchased "Jackie Brown"...a film with a wonderful plot and some redeeming value...I thought I would give another Quentin Tarantino picture a try. As this is the movie that supposedly started off his successful career, I figured this was a great place to start.

What a repulsive piece of celluloid this movie turned out to be. Violence in a movie for a reason is one thing. Violence for shock value is quite another. There doesn't really seem to be any reason for this movie to exist except to disgust the viewer with it repugnant bloodshed.

This is the kind of movie which really makes me question as to whether Hollywood DOES have some responsibility toward desensitizing weak individuals into replicating such violent acts.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Nothing but a rip-off
Review: Quentin Tarantino doesn't have a creative bone in his body. All he did was rip off the Hong Kong movie, "City on Fire" and added his crappy dialogue.

I could steal any number of ideas from different movies and make them into my own. However, it does not make me a film-making genius as people seem to believe Tarantino is....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Reservoir Dogs- A Fine Debut from Tarantino
Review: Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs is an American ganster classic. It's clever and well written, nicely acted and intense and even a bit funny at times. The film's cast includes an ensemble of fine actors including: Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, Harvey Keitel as Mr. White, Tim Roth as Mr. Orange and Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink along with a small role from Tarantino himself.
In 1992, Tarantino stunned many with this fine acheivement in filmmaking, working from his own screenplay. Madsen, Keital, Roth, Buscemi, and Tarantino play gansters all working together in an elaborate heist. Suddenly, the cops are already in place and a bloody ambush takes place, and it seems that there is a set-up in play. One of the gansters among them is more deceptive than he seems and the intensity is at its highest.
As well as know this is a Quentin Tarantion film so it's most obviously violent. Reservoir Dogs is rated R for Strong Violence and Language. The violence includes bloody gunplay, fisticuffs and grisly scenes of torture, including the infamous "ear" scene. Michael Madsen is perfect as a psychopath, he's malicious, brutal and even in some cases funny.
Tarantino soon went on the road to stardom making bigger movies,
including the amazing Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and the Kill Bill films, Vol. 2 is due out April 16, 2004 by the way. If you want to see an excellent debut from a great director, see Reservoir Dogs. There are few directors like Tarantino, that's why you should see this movie, cause this is one hell of a movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt
Review: Let's see: On the plus side, great cast, which is why I watched this gory snoozer through to the end (that, plus waiting for something interesting to happen), a very funny scene with Michael Madsen as dancing psychopath, and some amusing dialog here and there. That's about it. Gross and noisy and pretty damned dull overall.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Highly Enjoyable Crime Film.
Review: The only reason I had any desire at all to see "Reservoir Dogs"
was because i'm a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino and after seeing this I was not dissapointed.The movie is about modern day robbers who don't know any of their partners names so if they get caught by the cops they won't be able to tell them anything.
They have code names including Mr.White(Harvey Keitel),Mr.Pink
(Steve Buscemi),Mr.Blond(Michael Madsen),Mr.Orange(Tim Roth),and
Mr.Brown(Quentin Tarantino.The film is about the robbers setting off to steal some diamonds and apparently there were cops waiting for them there,proving that a police informer is in their midst,now what Quentin Tarantino does here is he shows us what happened after the heist but not during it.All we know is that Mr.Brown and Mr.Blue are dead and that Mr.Orange was shot.
After they end up in a wherehouse where most of the movie takes place several Tarantino style twists happen.Such as the infamous ear scene which is a lot like the infamous scene between Marcellus and Zed in the film "Pulp Fiction".But this film has great acting and a great script which makes the movie great and is definently one of Tarantinos best.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Mr. Sh*t"
Review: Mr. Sh*t is not at all what Tarintino is when he made this movie. This was a great movie! But what do you excpect with a great cast great writer and great director. The acting was great in this movie take for example "Stuck In The Middle With You" what a distrubing but great scene that was! Tarintino wins big with this movie about crimanals and what can happen to them in a messed up situation. The dialouge that they use is another one of the great things in all his films. Great soundtrack as well. And as I said before in my Pulp Fiction review they way he narrates all his stories is great! Very entertaining! But not a movie to rent with your girlfriend unless you wanna get dumped and slapped.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Reservoir Dogs
Review: Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blue, Mr. White, Mr. Brown, Joe, and Nice Guy Eddie. To me this is one of the most memorable set of characters in cinema history. Why? Because they all played off each other so well in this movie. For those of you who have no idea what this movie is about it's about these theives who intend to steal some diamonds from a store and get away clean. Of course they don't and the movie deals with the aftermath of the heist as they try to uncover what went wrong and if there's an inside man working for the cops then who is it. Some of the characters make it back to the meeting point, some don't, and some show up much later on in the film. All this makes for a very interesting movie that puts the viewers nerves on end and eyes glued to the screen. One of the highlights of the movie of course is the beginning coversation the crew has sitting around a table before the pull of the heist. There we hear why the song 'Like a Virgin' is indeed called 'Like A Virgin' and why we shouldn't tip at resteraunts. While this is by no means a comedy film it does spare us a few moments where we can safely crack a smile. All in all this is an excellent film with great acting and enough quick witted dialogue to last as long as the length of the movie, and then some.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Tarantino's best film.
Review: I know I will catch hell for this from diehard Pulp Fiction fans, but this is Tarantino's best movie, in my opinion. I can understand why they would feel this way, because I feel like those films are equals, in many ways: both really have no plot, both have great dialogue, and both are very low budget. However, Reservoir Dogs comes out on top for one reason: it is simply more substantial. Pulp Fiction was really just a collage of various gangsters and lowlifes who are vaguely connected to each other; Reservoir Dogs is about a bank heist gone wrong.

Reservoir Dogs also gets a bad rap from movie critics because they feel that Tarantino liberally ripped-off many Hong Kong action pictures. While this may or may not be legit (I, for one, have never seen any of the foreign films he is supposed to have plagirized), one can clearly see that there is nothing original here, at least as far as plot is concerned. But that in itself is not unusual: look at The Usual Suspects (a very good movie by the way); it is basically a retelling of the themes in Reservoir Dogs, but no one called it a rip-off. That's because it placed more emphasis on characterization than plot (which is the basic idea behind ALL of Tarantino's films). Reservoir Dogs is the same way: an old story made new and exciting by an enthusiastic new director (he was at the time of this movie) and a brilliant cast.

That being said, we can move on to the movie. As I said before (and countless others before me), this movie is concerned with a bank robbery gone bad: several gangsters (all of which using a color code alias so their identities are kept secret from each other) individually make their way back to their "base" after the failed holdup (which is never shown on the film, except for a very brief flashback occuring outside the bank). Each is convinced that a "rat" is responsible (rat being a traitor, and not a disease carrying rodent, for those of you stupid to gangster lingo). The movie consists of flashbacks that tells how each character got into this mess. After the rat is revealed, all hell breaks loose: I won't go into details.

Tarantino compensates for a non-existent original plot by way of a terrific script (the opening diner scene is a classic example). Also worth mentioning are the conversations during the flashbacks of Mr. Orange. Strong performances are another plus: everyone in this film is flawless and well suited, even Tarantino himself in a brief, but memorable roll. Unlike alot of actor-directors, Tarantino knows his limits and stays within them; as such, he really comes off well with his characters because he doesn't push his limited acting skills front and center. But his part in this movie is very good, albeit very short. Next would be Steve Buscemi, who plays his characteristic weasel with a viciousness that he hardly ever gets to demonstrate. He is absolutely fantastic in this movie. Great performances are also turned in by Michael Madsen and Tim Roth. Madsen is his usual tough-guy self, but puts a spin on it by being a psychopath (and a very funny one, in a deadpan sort of way). As such, it is great fun to watch him because you don't exactly know what will he will do next. Tim Roth is an actor that I think should be getting ALOT more attention these days because he is truly fantastic here (as he was in his brief role in Pulp Fiction; fortunately, in this film, he has a much longer and critical role). He is incredible as Mr. Orange who, while spending alot of the movie bleeding, is torn between a horrible situation that he can't control. Last, but certainly not least, is Harvery Keitel, another vastly underappreciated character actor. Keitel has often been overshadowed in his movies because alot of his early ones were with De Niro. While he often plays the same type of character, he is incredible in this movie because he balances a cold-hearted pragmatism with an emotional involvement (evidenced by his argument with Mr. Pink and, later, his actions in Orange's flashback). Other minor actors (Penn, Tierney) are equally good, but are not on screen as much.

The low-budget look to the film is a complement to the story's gritty look at honor between thieves. The movie looks like it was shot in the seventies, which is way many people probably accused Tarantino of being a Scorsese poser (not true). The wonderful period music from that time is used extremely well. Tarantino has a true knack for that, which was later made famous by Pulp Fiction's great surf soundtrack. Pulp Fiction, though, doesn't have the great K-Billy (hilariously voiced by Steven Wright). The scenes are all well shot and directed. Contrary to my preconceptions about Tarantino, he is not a fast paced director: many of the scenes are slower paced than most movies. Pulp Fiction is also this way. Reservoir Dogs certainly isn't a slow film, but it is hardly a fast one. Alot of that opinion is probably because of the unbelievably overhyped violence in the movie: aside from a few very brief (though vicious) outbursts of violence (most of which occurs during flashback) this movie contains about as much violence as any cop show on television. It certainly IS violent, but not by the extent that critics have portrayed it. A great example is the infamous "torture" scene. I won't tell what happens, but the hype surrounding this scene is unbelievable and unwarranted, especially since 90% of it isn't even shown on film. However, don't get me wrong: as I said, this is a pretty violent movie, but nothing as violent as an average war movie.

That being said, in short,: great movie. I still think it is slightly better than Pulp Fiction (which, I would like to say, is an AWESOME movie), but rent it for yourself to find out.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: In a pack of wolves there is always a profit taker
Review: Another film about a gang of thieves that turns sour, will you say. Yes, but it is highly humorous and deeply barbaric. It shows how low these gangsters can go. They become beasts to others and beasts to themselves. They decide of the rules and they kill those who do not respect them. It is total alienation to the « mission » : the gangsters do not have any autonomy or freedom left. Their names are erased and changed to aliases imposed onto them. Their judgment is in the same way erased and replaced by « professional » reactions, like it or not. And when this turns sour, because a cop has infiltrated the gang, they all try to stick to the rules to the end, and hence to their death, but strangely enough, they kill one another in some kind of killing merry-go-round. The irony of the situation is that one manages to escape with the loot because he is swift enough to get out of the firing line and to shoot on the last survivor of the last firing round. There is always an intelligent wolf in a pack of wolves. But that is a habit with the films of this director, except that this one is a little bit more linear in the story telling than the famous « Pulp Fiction ». A perfect exercise in studying what losing control of reality means and what being alienated to your own rules can become. Does it speak of real life for real ordinary people ? I may even go as far as saying : yes probably.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU


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