Who let the dogs out?. Review on Reservoir Dogs Movie

Reservoir Dogs is a movie made to shock and awe the viewer,truly, with its amazing well-defined and tight plot, brilliant dialogs laced with black humour and dripping sarcasm garnished with a generous dosage of profanity added to raw emotion[hmm..sounds like a recipe ... for a classic], the top class acting by the star-studded star cast and awesome direction by then debutant director Quentin Tarantino. Lets look at them one by one now, shall we?

Mr White(Harvey Keitel), Mr Blonde(Michael Madsen),Eddie(Chris Penn), Mr Pink(Steve Buscemi),Joe(Lawrence Tierney),Mr Blue(Eddie Bunker),Mr Brown(Quentin Tarantino) and Mr Orange(Tim Roth) are the Reservoir Dogs.

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. --Mark Twain

The plot revolves a well-planned jewel heist by a gang of eight - planned by eight, to be executed by six. Come D-day, the hold-up goes horribly wrong for the robbers ending with a shoot-out with the cops...think you have heard the story before? Think you have heard of inspired Hindi film scripts? My friend, this is the real McCoy .. this is Reservoir Dogs..read on! Following the shootout one of them is certainly dead(Mr Brown), one is critically injured(Mr Orange) and the ones that are alive and well are coming to terms with the fact that there is an informant among them. The shootout happens within the first 15 minutes of the movie, the rest of the story is all about the interactions between the men who make it alive(Mr White, Mr Blonde, Mr Pink and Mr Orange) and the two men from the outside(Joe and Eddie - father and son) who see their carefully planned robbery ruined. The plot is further thickened by Mr Blonde returning from the shootout with a cop as hostage. The story is bizarre in ways with different threads emerging from the main plot but eventually they all converge for a brilliant climax.

cave canum.(beware of the dog) --Unknown

The acting, particularly by Keitel, Madsen and Roth is top-class. Madsen in particular is brilliant in his role as the chilling Mr Blonde, the sadist with a passion for violence who mercilessly guns down the store's customers leading to the shootout. His performance as he gleefully mauls and maims the undercover cop is marvellous and you really feel pity for the cop and total revulsion for Mr Blonde. Also his brief exchanges with Mr White is one of the highlights of this movie. Keitel as Mr White fits his role as the senior gangster perfectly. Not a calculating type but a gangster with ethics if there ever is one. Roth performs very well as Mr Orange. He spends a major port of the movie in a pool of blood from the bullet wound to his gut. His performance as he convinces Joe, Eddie and most importantly Mr White of his authenticity as a criminal initially is good. Buscemi also merits a mention for his acting as the self-claimed professional criminal who first figures out that there is an informant among them and wants to flee from the meeting point as soon as possible. Penn is good, paricularly the scene where he argues with Mr Brown about Mr Blonde. Tierney does well as the boss who assembles the crew for the job. Bunker as Mr Blue doesnt have much to do in the movie, probably 2 to 3 dialogues.

Beware of silent dogs and still waters --Portuguese Proverb

The plot of this story is enhanced by the brilliant dialogues. The person who came up with the dialogues should be honoured. The dialogues enhance most of the scenes and you end up rewinding many a time to catch the dark humour and sarcasm in some of the dialogues. Some stand alone dialogues that enhance the scene are mentioned below. Believe me they are amazing in the context at which they are uttered:

In the midst of a particularly interesting conversation between hot under the collar Mr White and a laidback and calm Mr Blonde, Mr Blonde tells Mr White ''Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?''

As Mr Blonde readies himself to torture the hostage cop, he tells him ''Look kid, I am not gonna bulls you okay?...I don't really give a good f what you know or dont know - but I am going to torture you anyway.''

A conversation between Mr Pink and Mr White when Mr Pink sees the critically injured Mr Orange -

Mr Pink: Oh this is bad, this is so bad, Is it bad?

Mr White: As opposed to good?

The bleeding hostage cop with right ear chopped off[by Mr Blonde, who else] to a critically wounded Mr Orange, ''Freddie...Freddie... how do I look?''

There are many many more awesome dialogues and scenes. I had a feeling if I started listing all of them I'll cross the 8000 char limit in no time with the most common word being f ...

Some days you're the dog, and some days you're the hydrant. --Unknown

And last but not the least the direction and screenplay of Mr Brown himself, Quentin Tarantino. He has a small role as an actor with one delightful monologue in which he analyses Madonna's song ''Like A Virgin'' in great detail, but lets not get into that ;) His direction is brilliant and he surely does as well as his idols, Martin Scoresese and John Woo. Nothing more needs to be said about his skills. The background score is pretty good. The editing is slick. The coffeehouse scene at the start of the movie conceived by Tarantino is simply superb. The conversation goes on around the table as the camera keeps circling the table focussing on one actor after another. Also watch out for the ending face-off scene. Absolutely brilliant picturization .. I am running out of superlatives.

All in all a definitely watchable movie provided you are not one of the squeamish types and do not like gore. This movie has a liberal dosage of blood and bullets but then its a movie which redefines it genre. This is One Perfect Movie.Period.

Every dog has its day