Reservoir Dogs

Joe Cabot is planning a diamond robbery with the help of his son - ”Nice Guy” Eddie. They hand-pick a gang of criminals who are given code names in order not to reveal their identity. The ''perfect crime'' is broken off by the police, but the robbers manage to escape. Suspicions arise within the group as to whether there is a traitor among them. The result is a devastating and bloody showdown.

Comment:
Pale men in black suits and pitch black sunglasses. They bathe in blood and it is beautiful. Above all fascinating. In this film the director Tarantino manages to splatter over ninety percent of the screen in about the same percentage of time with red, without it even crossing my mind that this could be interpreted as trying speculation.
I have definitely never seen a film where so many red blood corpuscles are splashed all over the place, while at the same time nothing happens. The primary thing, the robbery itself, the only reason the eight suit clad men meet and speak a single word to each other, is something that we as an audience never get to see. It is like at the theatre, where the audience itself often has to fill in the course of events. Like in the Greek tragedies when terrible things happen ~behind the stage''. We never see Oedipus kill his father or sleep with his mother.
What is fascinating about Reservoir Dogs is its form. Tarantino seeks his way back
to the source of storytelling. Indeed there are reminiscences of Film Noir, New Wave and - as Tarantino himself has pointed out - Stanley Kubrick. But above all it is an ancient Greek drama that is unrolled before our eyes.
In an almost fatalistic way all the characters, be they good or evil, are led to the abrupt end. ”The system'' has provided each of them with their part and all they can do is play it weI!. Gangster or cop, what's the difference?
Reservoir Dogs doesn't just narrate in pictures. Like something of a chamber play the characters talk their way toward the thriller, in a next to closed room. It has been a long time since I last saw such a development in an American movie. Tarantino doesn't allow himself any more freedom from Aristotle's laws of the theatre than what Shakespeare did in his time. The three laws of unity; one room, one story and twenty-four hours.
In Reservoir Dogs everything takes place on a stage; in an empty warehouse, which Tarantino has painted in a color similar to the aquarium one had as a child in which the enclosed fish surprisingly soon laid upside down.
Quentin Tarantino's film brings the development of film ahead by taking it back, if you see what I mean. This actor decided to become a director. He made the right choice, because his future as a director should be very bright.
Henric Tiselius

Medverkande
Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen: Producent
Lawrence Bender: Manus
Quentin Tarantino: Foto
Andrzej Sekula: Musik
Björn Skifs: Talat språk
English