Reservoir Dogs: The Perfect Debut

Quentin Tarantino is one of the most beloved filmmakers working today, and I just love the guy, and I'm so excited for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. So much so, that I want to talk about my favourite Tarantino film, which, incidentally, is his first one, Reservoir Dogs. When I did my top 12 movies of all time, I had a shedload of honourable mentions, and this was definitely one of them. This is how you debut. Tarantino exploded into the screen with this, a white hot, audacious film that even 27 years later, still packs one of cinema's strongest punches. Time has been (mostly) kind to Tarantino's debut, which is as explosively cool now as it was in 1992

Reservoir Dogs follows a group of thieves carrying out a diamond heist, which goes wrong when one of them rats them out to the police. Injured and bloodied, the gang need to find out who sold them out, fast. It's clear from the opening minutes that Tarantino means business, with a conversation loaded with his trademark razor sharp dialogue ("let me tell you what Like a Virgin is all about...."), which then leads to one of the most iconic opening credits scenes ever, that awesome slow motion walk set to Little Green Bag. From there, the film is a tightly constructed, snappily paced story, brilliantly told

Where the hell do I even begin with how much I love this film? Almost everything about it is great. I guess I could start with the cast. A stoic Harvey Keitel, a nervy Steve Buscemi, a psychotic Micheal Madsen and a bloodied Tim Roth  are the highlights, but everyone is pretty much perfect in this film. It's almost like a play, driven almost purely on the strength of these performances. Because of this, Reservoir Dogs is like pulpy, ultraviolent theatre, with each of these guys different as their performances are, each of them brings that kind of hard-boiled cool that would come to become a trademark of Tarantino's. The film's full of these future staples actually, such as.....

THE FREAKING SOUNDTRACK. K Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s is almost like another character in this film, and every time music plays, it's telling a part of the story without using words. Obviously there's the notorious Stuck in the Middle With You torture scene which works because it uses the most upbeat pop song to score the goriest and most distressing scene in the film, but every other track does a similar thing. Look at how Little Green Bag plays over the dogs going to execute the heist, or how Hooked on a Feeling scores the rat trying to win the trust of the gang in a flashback. Soundtracks are everything in cinema, and a great one can work as an effective storytelling tool. And this one is perfect, filling in parts of the narrative with a carefully curated playlist of 70s songs that also works as a radio show that plays over the course of the weekend, which strengthens the film's structure and gives it a definite sense of time. And on top of all of that, it's the kind of killer soundtrack that we've come to associate Tarantino with, the kind that sets a definite tone, gives us a better feel of the characters, is an effective narrative tool in itself, and is just incredibly cool to listen to. In the blistering heat of the heist's disastrous aftermath, the soundtrack provides some ice cube cool refuge, giving us a distinct mood and feel that would come to define Tarantino and his style

The way the plot plays out is simple, but so incredibly effective. The reveal of who the rat actually is is such a wonderful twist, one that Tarantino masks with not just the chaotic haze of violent panic, but also just by putting in plain sight. I won't say who it is in case you've somehow yet to see it, but I think it's one of QT's most devilishly clever narrative tricks. From the beginning, Reservoir Dogs is nervy and paranoid. We get a decent idea of who these characters are, but not well enough so that when the chaos begins, we suspect them all. As far as we know, they all did it, and they're also all innocent. Because after all, in a situation like this, can you actually trust anybody? Tarantino keeps us firmly rooted in this violent panic, never giving us the clarity or time to get our bearings and figure out the truth. His showman like grip over the story is what makes this movie work, distracting us with flash and panache that allows him to get a fairly obvious reveal right past us. Not that the tricks he uses to distract us are purely for show, because they essentially work as his calling card, a powerful showcase of who this fresh faced filmmaker is, while also masking a narrative punch that comes to prove that this guy isn't all talk

And yeah, he's not all talk, but Jesus that's some dialogue. Tarantino is known as a master screenwriter, one who can make every word of dialogue count, often with a razor sharp double meaning. The lines are sharp, snappy and drenched in panic and dread. The pop culture references are liberal, but not hollow. They tie Reservoir Dogs into the larger canon of media, while also mirroring how people can use the films they watch and music they listen to to connect with each other, insult each other and, crucially, communicate with each other. The script is actually almost perfect, with the occasional line not aging the best, but generally being one of his best, one that conveys the imminent danger in the story while also maintaining a facade of cool composure. Add to that Tarantino's confidence behind the camera, where his grip on everything you're seeing is vice-grip tight, and you've got a debut that's assured, exact, and deeply effective

Reservoir Dogs is the perfect debut. It introduces the world to Tarantino in such a fantastic way, by giving us everything he'd come to adopt and meld into his own unique style. Yeah, the influences are clear (70s crime movies in particular, especially The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3), but like he'd show us time and time again, pop culture is just clay that he can bend into his own specific shape, using the things we recognise as ingredients to make something that's undoubtedly his. This panicky tale of diamond thieves is one of cinema's most breathlessly thrilling, but it also contains the verve and energy that Tarantino is somehow able to hold onto all these years later. He sets the temperature here, ensuring that it's absolutely white hot, and then is somehow able to (more or less) keep the heat at that intensity for his whole career so far. That in itself is an impressive feat, but the fact that this is the film that birthed Tarantino as we know him now is what makes it such a stellar first outing