Quentin Tarantino
Le Iene

“Reservoir Dogs” is Quentin Tarantino's debut film. Right from his first feature film, the director introduces many "topical" elements (precisely those present in subsequent productions). One of these is the use of materials from mass media in which he adopts narrative and textual techniques taken from the avant-gardes, also known as avantpop. Other characteristics include: brazen and "baroque" dialogue, violence, intense dark humor, and fragmented chronology. A rather sparse, fierce, and "impactful" debut for the cinema of the period, so much so that during the presentation of the film at the "Sundance Film Festival" it faced numerous criticisms (for the violent content) and accusations of plagiarism. Indeed, Tarantino takes up an already treated genre, and not being a true innovator, he expresses his talent by maniacally reinterpreting and elevating the mediocrity of certain products, thus bringing so-called "B movies" to the highest levels.

“Reservoir Dogs” begins with one of those peculiar, if not surreal, discussions typical of Tarantino. While the camera "tracks" back and forth behind the protagonists sitting at a bar table, they discuss the meaning of Madonna's song "Like a Virgin," and it is the director himself (present in some scenes) who supports the hypothesis that it is about a prostitute possessed by a man so endowed that he makes her feel pain, just as if she were still a virgin.

“MR. BROWN: Let me tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's about a girl who hooks up with a guy with a dick this big! The whole song is a metaphor for big dick.

MR. BLONDE: No, not at all, it's about a vulnerable girl because she's been screwed over and under, but then she meets a sensitive guy and…

MR. BROWN: Nononono, sweetheart, these are tourist bullshit!

JOE: [flipping through a diary]: Toby? Toby? Who the hell is Toby?

MR. BROWN: 'Like a Virgin' is not about a sensitive girl meeting a good guy at all. That's 'True Blue,' yes, that's it, no doubt about it.

[…]

MR. BROWN: What the hell was I saying?

MR. PINK: You said that 'True Blue' is about a sensitive girl who meets a good guy, while 'Like a Virgin' is a metaphor for big dick.

MR. BROWN: Oh yes. Let me tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about. It's about a chick who fucks like crazy left and right, day and night, morning and evening. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck fuck.

MR. BLUE: How many fucks?

MR. WHITE: A ton!

MR. BROWN: Until one fine day she meets a John Holmes-sized guy and then bang! I mean, a guy who digs tunnels with his tool, like Charles Bronson in The Great Escape. She goes at it like a pig, until she feels something she hasn't felt in ages: pain… Pain. It hurts her! It hurts her… It shouldn't, because the road is good and paved by now, but when the guy pumps her, it hurts. The same pain she felt the first time, you understand? The pain makes the mad fucker remember the sensations from when she was still a virgin… And thus, 'Like a Virgin'!”

At this point, the director raises the tension with a cold shower. The next scene transports the viewer into the middle of the story that will be narrated in various chronologically fragmented episodes. (Harvey Keitel is at the wheel of a car and Tim Roth, lying in the back seat soaked in a pool of blood, shot in the abdomen and terrified of dying as they are hastily fleeing the crime scene).

The film is about a group of gangsters, covered by a code name corresponding to a color. They are hired by an old procurer to organize a heist in a laboratory full of diamonds. However, something goes wrong because at the moment of the action, the police are stationed and ready to fire. The survivors of the shootout take refuge in a warehouse where they interrogate and accuse each other to discover who the mole is that tipped off the police, and no one trusts anyone else anymore.

The development of the characters is worth the entire filmography of the director: Mr. White, Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Brown, and the underrated “Eddie the beautiful” make up his most interesting and original sequence of characters. The interpretations are equally valuable, starting with the excellent Tim Roth and the more than decent Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, and Harvey Keitel.

“Reservoir Dogs” is an extremely violent work, the most violent of Tarantino. Once the nonsensical dialogues are set aside in the more relaxed scenes, the film is nothing less than an adrenaline-pumping sequence of brutality and cynicism, a noir of haunting tension.

If “Pulp Fiction” is the perfect film, the masterpiece of the director, “Reservoir Dogs” is the most expressive, raw, rough, essential, and representative work of Quentin Tarantino, a bit like a rough diamond, before being worked on.