Tripwire Reviews LionsGate’s Reservoir Dogs Limited Edition 4K UHD + Blu-ray SteelBook

Independent Thinking

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at LionsGate’s special edition of Quentin Tarantino’s debut Reservoir Dogs…
Reservoir Dogs
Director: Quentin Tarantino;
Stars: Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel

The year was 1992 and cinemas were dominated by the likes of Tim Burton’s sequel to Batman, Batman Returns, and Macauley Culkin’s Home Alone 2. Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs came along like a precocious bolt from the blue. Not since the rise of directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola had a moviemaker appeared with a love of cinema and a visual flourish that managed to synthesise the boldest aspects of the directors they admired while adding something new to the pot. Reservoir Dogs had such a massive impact on Hollywood that critics coined the term Tarantinoesque to describe films that followed in his wake. Without it, The Usual Suspects would never have been made and even films like Sin City and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang owe a great deal to the director.

Reservoir Dogs sets out its stall from the very beginning. The opening scene where we witness the members of the criminal gang discussing Madonna’s Like A Virgin while also talking about the pros and cons of tipping in restaurants is a brilliantly simple yet effective way of introducing the audience to the dramatis personae. I use a theatrical term here because Reservoir Dogs, while it plays to the strengths of cinema, also feels very theatrical in its structure, setting, payoff and tone. The Reservoir Dogs are a gang of thieves assembled by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney). Each member has his own code name: Harvey Keitel plays Mr. White, Tim Roth is Mr. Orange, Michael Madsen is Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi is Mr. Pink and Quentin Tarantino is Mr. Brown. Inevitably the robbery goes awry thanks to the presence of undercover cop Freddy Newandyke (Tim Roth) and Cabot’s seemingly well-realised plan crumbles before their very eyes.

Reservoir Dogs feels like a freshman effort, and there are scenes which seem as if Tarantino is trying desperately to ask the audience to love this film. However there are moments of brilliance and genius scattered throughout, from the opening scene to the still-terrifying ear-cutting scene with Madsen at his scary best, that makes it probably the most important film released in 1992 or arguably during the entire decade. In terms of the cast, the standouts are Harvey Keitel, who won deserved plaudits for his role as Mr. White, Madsen, who was never quite as nasty or as cool ever again and Roth, even though his American accent doesn’t quite pass muster all the time. There is real chemistry between the pair on screen. The supporting cast, like the late Chris Penn as Nice Guy Eddie and Lawrence Tierney as criminal mastermind Cabot are also exceptional. I cannot review Reservoir Dogs without mentioning the soundtrack: like Scorsese, Tarantino understood that music can make or break a movie and his choice of tracks here is impeccable. They really add to the atmosphere and the general ambience of the film. Reservoir Dogs is only 100 minutes long, and despite packing a hell of a lot of story into the proceedings, there isn’t a microsecond of flab here. This 4K restored edition looks really sharp, enhancing the look of the film and the deleted scenes including the ear-cutting scene from two different vantage points are interesting to watch as you understand why Tarantino left them out.

Despite the odd flaw, even thirty years later, Reservoir Dogs is still rightly considered a bold, bravado work of modern cinema that is a worthy addition to the canon of American film-making and it more than deserves a special edition of this kind.

Reservoir Dogs Limited Edition 4K UHD + Blu-ray SteelBook is out now from LionsGate