Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite? This week we're holing up in the warehouse for Reservoir Dogs (1992) — Quentin Tarantino's incendiary, electrifying, endlessly quotable feature-length debut that premiered at Sundance, became the most talked-about film in the festival's history, changed independent cinema forever, and launched one of the most significant directorial careers of the 20th century on a budget of approximately $1.2 million. There are great debut films. And then there is Reservoir Dogs, which operates in a category entirely by itself.Written and directed by Tarantino in his feature-length directorial debut, the film follows a group of strangers — each known only by a color-coded alias — hired by crime boss Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his son Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) to rob a diamond exchange, a heist that goes catastrophically wrong when the police arrive with inexplicable speed, leaving the surviving crew to regroup in an industrial warehouse and attempt to work out which one of them is the police informant who set them up. Harvey Keitel is Mr. White. Tim Roth is Mr. Orange. Michael Madsen is Mr. Blonde. Steve Buscemi is Mr. Pink. And the heist itself — around which every single scene in the film orbits — is never shown on screen at all.We're going deep on everything: Tarantino deliberately chose not to show the robbery because withholding it allows the film to be "about other things" — a technique he compared to the offscreen burglary in Glengarry Glen Ross and to the structural work of novelists who trust their readers to fill in what isn't shown, the extraordinary torture scene set to Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You" which remains one of the most brilliantly constructed sequences in 1990s cinema, the film's deep debt to Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and the French crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville, the completely accidental origin of the title — which came from a customer at Tarantino's old video store video archives who mispronounced the title of Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants, and why Harvey Keitel's decision to come aboard as producer as well as actor was the single act that made the film possible.We're also asking the big questions: is Reservoir Dogs the greatest debut film ever made? Where does it rank in the Tarantino filmography? And is Mr. Blonde a villain, a maniac, or — given everything we eventually learn about what he does and doesn't do — something more complicated than either?Whether you're a Tarantino devotee, a Harvey Keitel fan, a Michael Madsen admirer, a Tim Roth enthusiast, a Steve Buscemi completist, a lover of independent cinema history, someone who wants to understand how a $1.2 million film changed Hollywood, or just a person who has strong opinions about tipping — this episode is essential.Topics covered: Reservoir Dogs 1992 | Quentin Tarantino debut | Harvey Keitel | Tim Roth | Michael Madsen | Steve Buscemi | Mr. Blonde | Mr. Pink | Mr. White | Mr. Orange | greatest directorial debuts | best independent films ever | Sundance Film Festival | nonlinear storytelling | heist films | torture scene Stuck in the Middle With You | ear scene | best film soundtracks | Tarantino filmography ranked | Pulp Fiction comparison | The Killing Kubrick influence | Glengarry Glen Ross comparison | Jean-Pierre Melville influence | $1.2 million budget | Harvey Keitel producer | best 90s crime films | most influential independent films | Mr. Pink tipping debate | Reservoir Dogs title origin | who is the rat Reservoir Dogs | movie review podcast | film analysis | best ensemble casts | best debut films cinema history | color coded charactersSubscribe, rate, and leave us a review — and settle the two debates that have raged since 1992: is Reservoir Dogs better than Pulp Fiction? And was Mr. Pink right about tipping?YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@RegularorMentholContact us: [email protected]