In what still ranks among Tarantino's most inventive, simple set pieces, Orange learns and performs an elaborate "amusing anecdote about a drug deal" gone almost disastrously bad. It's their bond that gives the film its unexpected bit of soul and relatability. The simple decency White feels towards Orange, his sense responsibility for the man's mortal plight, is not the stuff of thieves and killers. Of course, veteran thief White doesn't know Orange is actually (spoiler alert-but, come on) a damn good undercover cop. In a flashback later in the film, we see the two growing close, trading lewd jokes and building a nearly endearing sense of camaraderie as they talk through the intricacies of the heist. White, breathed into tragic life by a heartbreaking Harvey Keitel. Orange, played by a pallid, brilliant Tim Roth, screaming in agony as his guts bleed out all over the back seat of a car being careened around town by the ruddy Mr. There's a comfortable rapport, casual, risqué wisecracks-all things that would become hallmarks for Tarantino.Īfter the legendary opening credits sequence-the suave crew walking out of the diner in slow motion, set to the George Baker Selection's super cool "Little Green Bag"-everything falls apart. They're carbo/grease-loading, gabbing about the subtext of Madonna's "Like a Virgin," and easing up for what would seem to be a manageable, by-the-book job: robbing a local diamond wholesaler. Six contracted stick-up men in black suits-each given a color-based moniker chosen by their employer-and their two bosses finish up breakfast at a greasy diner. The film opens with a scene of controlled, garrulous chaos. The plot's like this: A diamond heist goes way bad and the thieves are left to pick up the pieces back at their warehouse headquarters, all the while suspecting that a traitor in their midst sabotaged the operation. So the film's unsettlingly tragic conclusion give you a sense of Tarantino as, yes, a master of excess, but also as a writer whose characters' personal defeats matter as much, if not more so, than the bloody mess that meets them at the end. Misplaced loyalties lead these men to misjudge one another, mistake their intentions, and fail to hear common sense. But we also have a pair of quasi-paternal bonds that constrict and compromise the characters: the ill-fated friendship of Mr.'s White and Orange, and the unswerving loyalty between their boss and the unstable Mr. Yes, in Reservoir Dogs, we have nervy banter, jarring intrusions of homophobia and racism, and savage violence. It's loaded with painful, unexpectedly moving observations about not movies or violence or culture but rather people, offering a brutal rejoinder to the common perception of Tarantino as a live-action, redundant cartoonist more interested in upsetting convention than in creating real characters. Perez and other Tarantino doubters would be well-advised to embark on a reprisal of their own: revisiting Tarantino's first movie, Reservoir Dogs, which turns 20 today. How 'The Sessions' Tells the Sweet, Awkward Truth About Sex At this point, we can only hope." Far from scathing, Perez does allow that Tarantino's early work "practically upend movies and the zeitgeist as we know it," but that his overriding virtue is his genre experimentation. Django Unchained will act as something more than reprisal via stylish violence. "Then again, with n-words abounding and situations like whippings and slave fights to the death, perhaps. That would be all too familiar," Perez writes. But so too would be a simple revenge picture with the latest genre exploration, with incongruent pop cultural music moments and overly clever dialogue.
RESERVOIR DOGS CHARACTER MOVIE
Perez isn't hoping for a message movie from Tarantino-"that would be dull. There are those, like IndieWire's Rodrigo Perez, who have grown tired of his antics. Political correctness will be violated, and people will die in upsetting ways. His latest twist on an expired genre, the film is a spaghetti western set in the Deep South, in which a former slave (Jamie Foxx) teams up with a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to rescue his still-enslaved wife (Kerry Washington) from an evil plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Everything we've seen of Quentin Tarantino's upcoming Django Unchained suggests that it will be hyper-referential, irony-laced, and whip-smart.