Quartile rating: 8.5/10 · 1 rating
A botched robbery indicates a police informant, and the pressure mounts in the aftermath at a warehouse. Crime begets violence as the survivors -- veteran Mr. White, newcomer Mr. Orange, psychopathic parolee Mr. Blonde, bickering weasel Mr. Pink and Nice Guy Eddie -- unravel.
Reservoir Dogs announced Tarantino as a singular voice with its nonlinear structure, razor-sharp dialogue, and chamber-drama tension built almost entirely on character rather than action. The ensemble — Keitel, Buscemi, Madsen, Roth — delivers uniformly exceptional performances, and the writing crackles with originality. The nonlinear storytelling and pop-culture-saturated dialogue were genuinely fresh in 1992. Cinematography is competent and purposeful but not visually distinguished — Andrzej Sekula's work serves the material without transcending it. The ending, while bloody and nihilistically satisfying, follows a fairly conventional crime-tragedy resolution and doesn't quite match the audacity of the setup.