Reservoir Dogs

RESERVOIR DOGS               C+               
USA  (99 mi)  1992  ‘Scope  d:  Quentin Tarantino 

I don't give a good fuck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless.       —Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen)

Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere with this astonishing film debut, playing mostly to arthouse crowds, but exhibiting an unusual command of David Mamet-style profanity-laden dialogue, camera placement, complex storytelling, period music, and terrific performances, all evident from the start.  Something of a horrific, one-act, modernist play, a revisit of Sartre’s No Exit, a heist gone wrong story told out of sequence, where it’s an action flick without the action, never showing the actual robbery, becoming instead a psychological examination of the male participants, all cast in their own conflicting moral dilemmas, where these guys are seen leading dead-end lives, so used to staring death in the eye that they become nihilistic, hardened cynics where life itself has little meaning.  It’s an ultra violent, excessively bloody but uncompromising work, a kind of pathetic existentialist reflection on the state of masculinity, as seen through the eyes of a gang of outlaws.  Opening with a big dick joke, veering into “nigger” jokes, a work where women are discussed almost exclusively as sex objects, the film is an impressionistic portrait of criminal outsiders living in a heavily stylized, artificial world where male tastelessness abounds.  While disguised within the context of male criminal mentality, much of these offensive views appear throughout the work of Tarantino, where for whatever reason, he’s deluded to think a white guy can tell “nigger stories” without evoking an offensive racial response.  Tarantino goes further and uses the same obnoxious tastelessness with stories about Jews, Asians, blacks, and women, all meant for laughs, where in his mind cleverness rises above the derogatory nature of his commentary.  Nonetheless, the offense is still there onscreen.  It’s not much different than doing a scene in blackface, which Spike Lee did in his own film BAMBOOZLED (2000), but even from a black director it’s still abhorrently tasteless.  Some may think the laugh overrides the offense, which is easy to think, so long as the noxious joke is not on you. The director’s self-indulgent insistence, however, to inflict his own brand of adolescent callousness upon the public only undermines the overall significance of his work.  

The film challenges the pervasive view that there is a code of honor among thieves, as personified by mythical outlaws like Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), who captured the nation’s attention during the Depression by becoming identified with American folklore, or a bond of loyalty owed to seemingly invincible outlaws like James Cagney’s iconic gangster Cody Jarrett in White Heat (1949).  Instead this film suggests every man is not a superhero, but simply a man, where if pushed far enough, they’re subject to a psychological meltdown.  In the manner of John Huston’s ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950), a film noir written by crime novelist W.R. Burnett, the story concerns a group of men planning a jewel robbery, becoming a study in crime.  While Huston’s film is hyper-realistic, reflecting the mindset of a near perfect crime that quickly unravels at the last moment leaving every man paying the ultimate price, Tarantino creates a vacuous netherworld that takes place nearly entirely inside an empty warehouse.  More importantly, one of the gang takes a bullet in the gut and can be seen slowly bleeding to death, laid out alone on a ramp receiving no medical attention, a reflection of the fate that awaits each and every one of them.  This fatalistic exercise goes through various stages, introducing in segments each of the main characters, developing introductory insight into each man, bringing a unique kind of insight into their master plan, where the audience only sees the aftermath, where information spills out little by little.  The characters themselves are memorable, headed by Joe (Lawrence Tierney), the aging leader of the pack and his hot-head son Eddie (Chris Penn).  The rest are identified only under alias names, where stalwart gangster Harvey Keitel is Mr. White, the more nervous Tim Roth is Mr. Orange, manic psychopath Michael Madsen is Mr. Blonde, while the always pissed off Steve Buscemi is Mr. Pink.  Of interest, Blonde’s actual name is Vic Vega, the brother of Vincent Vega, John Travolta’s character in Pulp Fiction (1994), where Tarantino always wanted to bring them together in a film, but never did.

What’s unique about the film is how different each character is, though all are unlikable, where there’s no real emotional connection to any one of them, mostly seen only after the failed robbery is over, where the mystery is observing how they each react to the ultimate failure of their mission.  Perhaps the most inventive aspect is Tarantino’s imaginative use of flashbacks, gaining insight into the principal characters, where especially intriguing is an extended men’s room joke that is completely made up, that is part of an original flashback scene with Tim Roth, but is then used again as a fictitious personal anecdote told as if it actually happened in another sequence.  Tarantino brings a great deal of sympathy to each character, all brilliantly realized by the cast, but the film itself is a slow burn of increasing anxiety, where initially only three characters (one of them bleeding to death, Mr. Orange) make it to the warehouse, the supposed meeting place, though others eventually arrive, where both Mr. Pink and White are positive they were set up, that one of the insiders is a rat.  Both are amazed at the crude, Neanderthal behavior of Mr. Blonde, who they claim is a psychopath that just went berserk during the heist, causing the whole thing to blow up in their faces, with some killed and others lucky to make it out alive.  The audience gets to observe the personal workmanship of Mr. Blonde firsthand in the most horrifically gruesome sequence of the film, where he is seen sadistically enjoying the torture of a captured police officer, all set to the Bubblegum pop music of The Jeff Healey Band’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.”  Certainly an essential difference between this film and Pulp Fiction is contrasted by the two torture scenes, one raw and graphically appalling, completely uncompromising, while the other is staged with a humorous turn of events, becoming part of the overall audience pleasing entertainment.  References to both Lee Marvin and Pam Grier appear here, as they do in later Tarantino films, becoming part of the ingrained interior mindset of the film’s cultural landscape, perhaps a response to the threat of feminism, nearly banishing women from the screen, becoming instead a distorted exaggeration of masculinity, perhaps leading to the satiric nightmarish delusions of David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), where Tarantino builds a mythical male refiguration through sick humor, contemporary tastelessness, outright cynicism, and an utter disdain for the responsibilities of the modern world.    

The Verdict

THE VERDICT                                                           A-                   

USA  (129 mi)  1982  d:  Sidney Lumet

The weak have gotta have something to fight for.  Ain’t that the truth?   

The court doesn’t exist to give them justice.  The court exists to give them a chance at justice.    

You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true." And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You are the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See, those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, "Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you." If... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And act with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

—Frank Galvin (Paul Newman)

Once more, getting right into the teeth of the story, the film opens in a portrait of despair, with a man having bourbon and half-eaten doughnuts or a raw egg in his beer in a bar for breakfast before he attempts to solicit his attorney services through the obituary section by attending funerals—an ambulance chaser, a pathetic sight handing out his card, especially when seen through the darkened lens of Andrzej Bartkowiak’s cinematography, making it painfully difficult to watch, especially as time wears on.  Set in the brown somber tones of old leather and wood, the audience bears witness to a thoroughly defeated man, humbled and humiliated into a crushing defeat at the hands of the world, groveling on his hands and knees, only seeing a blur through a dim alcoholic haze.  This describes Frank Galvin, Paul Newman in perhaps his best role during his distinguished and mature years, a guy just getting by, barely even a part of the world anymore, hanging on by a thread at the fringe.  Described as a lawyer with only three cases in four years, he’s a sorry sight, a demoralized man engulfed in a cloud of self pity.  This is a rather extraordinary set up, and the film takes its time revealing the full extent of his fall from grace.  Using a brilliant screenplay by David Mamet, adapted from a novel by Barry Reed, the old world Bostonian setting gives the film an intriguing historical reference point, a place where freedom was fought for and won, against heavy odds.  The interior architecture is richly detailed and textured, from the interior of a bar to the space inside the law offices or a courtroom.  Lumet’s virtuosity in filming architectural landscapes is as renowned and brilliantly conceived as his craftsmanship in creating interior landscapes.  The granite steps leading into the courthouse serve a noble purpose, offering a distinctive element that represents the corridors of justice and power, where at times the two can become intertwined and inseparable, a place rarely even visited by the little guy.  In Mamet’s eyes, the hallowed halls of justice serve the rich and powerful who can afford to pay for justice, while the rest are excluded in nearly every respect.  Before these pillars of the court, Frank Galvin has joined the ranks of the excluded.   

Jack Warden plays Mickey, Frank’s only friend left in the world, a bit gruff around the edges but a straight shooter, loyal and earnest, a guy who keeps throwing business Frank’s way during his drought, including a case coming up that has possibilities, one Frank isn’t the least bit prepared for, causing Mickey to walk out on him in disgust.  But his luck changes when he meets a girl in a bar, Laura, a very serious looking Charlotte Rampling.  In fact, the whole tone of the film shifts, becoming more animated and hopeful, where between bedroom affairs and dinner Frank spits out all this optimistic legalese that suggests the idealism of the law, not a perfect system, but one that at least offers the chance of justice.  Here love and justice feel intertwined, as Laura’s presence seems to have resuscitated an otherwise extinct species.  Pleading with Mickey to help him on the case, Frank’s life feels revitalized until he visits a young woman on life support that is the subject of his case, a girl in a coma since she was improperly anesthetized for a routine surgical procedure, the sight of which seems to both deflate and regalvanize his sinking spirits.  Since that act took place in a Catholic hospital, the Bishop himself meets with Frank and offers him a cash settlement of $210,000 to make amends, an amount he’s all too eager to accept, but has a change of heart, knowing the truth of what happened would be covered up forever, where the rich, once more, pay to have their dirty work remain hidden from view.  The obvious discrepancy between the two law firms is impossible not to notice, one is a staff of two men, while the other has literally dozens of people at the disposal of the lead attorney representing the Catholic Church, the smug, always overconfident picture of self-centered arrogance, James Mason as Ed Concannon, in another one of Mason’s slimy roles, playing a man the audience loves to hate.  But he’s used to winning and he’s used to having his way.  Unraveling slowly, the picture behind the scenes exposing just how he maintains that success rate is alarming to say the least. 

The story turns on several plot twists, where the meticulous nature of what lawyers do to prepare for a case is like a police procedural, as they have to contact potential witnesses who may have moved or changed their names, or chosen not to have anything to do with the case, or any number of reasons why they don’t wish to be contacted by an attorney desperate to put them on the stand.  When Galvin’s lead witness disappears in the dead of night, now off in an undisclosed location somewhere in the Caribbean, one realizes the immoral tactics he’s up against.  When his most convincing evidence disappears in an instant, his hopes dashed like a falling house of cards, Galvin panics when failure once more most assuredly comes knocking on his door.  Only at this point in the film does the camera finally move into the courtroom, the construction of which resembles Akira Kurosawa holding off the epic battle scenes in SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) until after the 3-hour mark.  Lumet’s decision similarly holds the tension in reserve while he goes to great lengths to carefully construct a more humane portrait of his main characters, so by the time they enter the scene of battle, the players are familiar and the audience is well aware of the stakes.   Red-haired, Irish accented Lindsay Crouse is positively exquisite in her small but remarkably potent role as a last second witness.  From the moment Galvin finds her, she’s a game changer, and one of the most eloquent pleas he makes in the entire film is humbly asking for her help.  This of course leads to the real drama in the courtroom, which reaches a climax in the quietest moment in the film when Frank makes perhaps the best closing argument in all of cinema, quoting the gospel, “Act as if ye had faith.”  This paramount moment answers all the swirling doubts and the burdens carried on the backs of so many fatigued and overloaded Sidney Lumet characters.  While many believe the quote is from Galatians or St. Paul, it’s actually from Mamet, answering that trembling, anxiety-ridden, alcoholic panic attack seen earlier in the film, slamming the bathroom door, shutting the world out, barely able to breathe, pulling himself together finally when it matters the most, recovering the lost vestiges of his long sought after soul.