film

Reservoir Dogs is the economical, spare and efficient place where it all started for Quentin Tarantino – a heist film that withholds the heist itself and instead traps its sharp-suited, sharp-tongued criminals in a warehouse as loyalties fray. Suits are sharp, dialogue sharper, ricocheting between pop trivia and sudden brutality. 

Harvey Keitel anchors the chaos as Tim Roth slowly bleeds out in the centre of it all, the structure looping and backtracking, revealing betrayals in jagged bursts, while glorious old soul cuts soundtrack a sequence of infamous moments and sadistic set pieces. Lean, mean and endlessly quotable, it announced a filmmaker who would reshape crime cinema in the 1990s.