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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Live / Artisan
Salesrank: 43514
Released: August 27, 2002 |
| Our Price: $7.94 |
| Used Price: $0.91 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere (i.e., a video store in Manhattan Beach, California) and turned Hollywood on its ear in 1992 with his explosive first feature, Reservoir Dogs. Like Tarantino's mainstream breakthrough Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs has an unconventional structure, cleverly shuffling back and forth in time to reveal details about the characters, experienced criminals who know next to nothing about each other. Joe (Lawrence Tierney) has assembled them to pull off a simple heist, and has gruffly assigned them color-coded aliases (Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, Mr. White) to conceal their identities from being known even to each other. But something has gone wrong, and the plan has blown up in their faces. One by one, the surviving robbers find their way back to their prearranged warehouse hideout. There, they try to piece together the chronology of this bloody fiasco--and to identify the traitor among them who tipped off the police. Pressure mounts, blood flows, accusations and bullets fly. In the combustible atmosphere these men are forced to confront life-and-death questions of trust, loyalty, professionalism, deception, and betrayal. As many critics have observed, it is a movie about "honor among thieves" (just as Pulp Fiction is about redemption, and Jackie Brown is about survival). Along with everything else, the movie provides a showcase for a terrific ensemble of actors: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Christopher Penn, and Tarantino himself, offering a fervent dissection of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" over breakfast. Reservoir Dogs is violent (though the violence is implied rather than explicit), clever, gabby, harrowing, funny, suspenseful, and even--in the end--unexpectedly moving. (Don't forget that "Super Sounds of the Seventies" soundtrack, either.) Reservoir Dogs deserves just as much acclaim and attention as its follow-up, Pulp Fiction, would receive two years later. --Jim Emerson
Description of Reservoir Dogs - (Mr. Blond) 10th Anniversary Special Limited Edition:
Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere (i.e., a video store in Manhattan Beach, California) and turned Hollywood on its ear in 1992 with his explosive first feature, Reservoir Dogs. Like Tarantino's mainstream breakthrough Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs has an unconventional structure, cleverly shuffling back and forth in time to reveal details about the characters, experienced criminals who know next to nothing about each other. Joe (Lawrence Tierney) has assembled them to pull off a simple heist, and has gruffly assigned them color-coded aliases (Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, Mr. White) to conceal their identities from being known even to each other. But something has gone wrong, and the plan has blown up in their faces. One by one, the surviving robbers find their way back to their prearranged warehouse hideout. There, they try to piece together the chronology of this bloody fiasco--and to identify the traitor among them who tipped off the police. Pressure mounts, blood flows, accusations and bullets fly. In the combustible atmosphere these men are forced to confront life-and-death questions of trust, loyalty, professionalism, deception, and betrayal. As many critics have observed, it is a movie about "honor among thieves" (just as Pulp Fiction is about redemption, and Jackie Brown is about survival). Along with everything else, the movie provides a showcase for a terrific ensemble of actors: Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, Christopher Penn, and Tarantino himself, offering a fervent dissection of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" over breakfast. Reservoir Dogs is violent (though the violence is implied rather than explicit), clever, gabby, harrowing, funny, suspenseful, and even--in the end--unexpectedly moving. (Don't forget that "Super Sounds of the Seventies" soundtrack, either.) Reservoir Dogs deserves just as much acclaim and attention as its follow-up, Pulp Fiction, would receive two years later. --Jim Emerson
Reservoir Dogs - (Mr. Blond) 10th Anniversary Special Limited Edition Reviews:
Dunno what the title means 
2009-12-10 - I guess I hadn't seen this since it came out, and I thought I remembered. But I didn't. The script here is fabulous, and of course, everything that's been said about the great cast and directing is all true. The time-shifting technique pioneered here went on to be used in quite a number of other films. And the coffee shop scenes, of course, resurfaced in Pulp Fiction and many more following movies. There's a lot of blood, but somehow it's not that gory, despite some torture that is one of the movie's most memorable sequences, set to Stealer's Wheel music. Ha. This is one of the few dvd's I have watched lately all the way through without a pause, my new standard for whether a movie is at the top of the pile. This one certainly is.
Classic
2009-11-06 - If you have never seen, one of my favorites. A lot of twists and turns in plot. Masterful suspense.
Tarantino's First Feature Sets The Pattern
2009-10-25 - Many of the techniques, such as violence and time shifting, used in Reservoir Dogs can be found in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, but this gangster film of a robbery gone terribly wrong is worth owning for the fine actors involved (Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney and Michael Madsen) and the excellent direction by Quentin Tarantino.
Reservoir Dogs looks great in blu-ray.
IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU SAY 
2009-09-25 - Frightening? Dangerous? Like life in Texas, it simply is what it is. Can't stand it? Can't change it. Get out, if and when you can.
Or better, it's like life and language in the criminal clsses. Not among the white collar criminals, the ivy league chislers, but the penetentiary guys. So, the lower classes; the guys who aren't afraid of guns or violence. Not at all the slick grifters who hire out of Washington and New York, who -- when and if they do get caught and sentenced -- serve time in country club prisons. The language is coarse and bracingly authentic. The much-needed anthesis of PC.
Everything the Amazons write about the movie is true, even though it is an old one: Vintage Tarrantino. But this is not yet another exercise in gratuitous profane language or obsenity; not a Broadway novelty to shock the B&T suburbanites. This is like Catullus for the screen -- (Mamet is probably still gnawing his guts out in envy) -- and now we find that Tarrantino has given us an exacting moral portrait of the former Vice President in torture lust. Worth every penny, every minute.
Think: the Professional Criminal classes are only other Americans that have been ignored. Do they not bleed like the rest of us?
Worst Movie Ever 
2009-09-19 - [...] Perfect example of a movie with a great cast and garbage for plot and production. I think the film I turned in for my 7th grade English project was better than this. If I could go back in time I would go back to when I was about to rent this movie and then punch myself in the stomach and steal my wallet. At least it wasn't as bad as Inkheart. That movie was horrible. But I would rather watch Hannah Montana season 1 than waste my time on Reservoir Dogs.
