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.    

Shakedown

SHAKEDOWN           B-                  

USA  1950  (80 mi)  d:  Joseph Pevney 

Noir City Chicago 4 ( 3rd Night)  Dan in the MW from a film noir discussion group, The Blackboard, August 19, 2012:            (excerpt) 

Thus far, the audiences have been enthusiastic and the ticket sales have been quite good overall. This is my fourth such festival and I was able to recognize many repeat customers in the audience from prior years. One of the nicest things about Noir City Chicago is that, when time permits, the Film Noir Foundation hosts have been approachable and patient in terms of answering questions and holding conversations with theater patrons. The Music Box, which opened its doors in the late Twenties, has always been a neighborhood theater, but it does have a fairly large lobby area that allows people an opportunity to do a bit of casual socializing. I am not certain that such intimacy would be possible in Los Angeles or San Francisco where the audiences are oftentimes much larger.

There is an interesting aspect to film noirs in the way they exaggerate masculinity, which is particularly noticeable in this film where Howard Duff as photographer Jack Early, in his shoulder padded suit, walks confidently into a San Francisco newspaper office looking for a job, turning women’s heads standing at every door.  Even more dramatic is the support and admiration he receives from a newspaper executive Ellen Bennett (Peggy Dow), who after a flirtatious introduction drops all moral standards and not only goes to bat for him with her editor David Glover (Bruce Bennett), but agrees to go out on a date with him, inviting him to her place for dinner.  These kinds of mixed signals are rarely received in real life, especially from an intelligent, well balanced, good looking and independent woman.  But the film’s introduction gives the audience a clearer picture of the man’s moral character, as we see him get the snot beat out of him at a vacant waterfront pier, apparently for taking a picture of a gangland beating—but he persists, using the photo to get his foot in the door at the paper, claiming he just happened to be in the neighborhood at the time, weaseling his way into a one-week trial period.  While Glover distrusts him from the outset, Bennett has other ideas and quickly turns into his love interest, despite her claim that her real love is a dentist living in Portland.  Duff is a fairly wooden actor, but he gives a maniacal performance here as a man ruthlessly driven to step over anybody to get what he wants.  Wearing his ambition on his sleeve, he’s little more than a cynical opportunist, which is particularly evident in the next two photos he provides, where he basically instructs accident victims in peril to pose for his camera, always getting the shot he wants. 

With Bennett leading the charge, Early is hired full-time as a photo editor, all but ignoring the others at the newspaper, where he’s continually driven to get an “exclusive,” quickly making a name for himself, but also boosting newspaper sales.  In something of an ironic twist, Glover decides to have a little fun at Jack’s expense, sending him to the criminal courts building to photograph a criminal, Nick Palmer (Brian Donlevy), who notoriously refuses to show his face to photographers.  The film takes on a different air when Jack strikes up a distinctly inappropriate conversation with Palmer’s wife sitting in the waiting car, Nita, Anne Vernon, easily the best thing in the film, a French actress in her only American appearance, perhaps best known as Catherine Deneuve’s mother in THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964).  Not only is she gorgeous with a distinct French accent, adding a touch of class and sophistication to what is otherwise a rather crude depiction of an overzealous craving for the American Dream, but she takes no guff from the guy, showing she has the balls to stand up for herself.  After promising Palmer a positive newspaper slant if he’d stop hiding and come clean, showing he has nothing to hide, Jack surprisingly gets that exclusive photo, which is little more than a pose, where Palmer invites him to his house with a proposition.  Early often comments how Ellen’s living room, with a picture window view of the city, or Palmer’s lavishly decorated home, is exactly what he’d like, including the woman (Nita) sitting on the sofa.  She, of course, encourages his foreplay, more likely curious what kind of deep shit it will get him into.  

Palmer promises to offer tips on the criminal underworld, knowing where they will strike before it happens, where Jack can get his exclusive photos, which Palmer figures is a way to get rid of some of his rival enemies, but Jack has other ideas, playing each side against the other, as he gets his photo of men coming out of a heist, but rather than take it to the newspaper, he decides to blackmail Palmer’s ex-partner, Harry Coulting (Lawrence Tierney), who committed the department store robbery, which is a much more lucrative, though dangerously ambitious con, which nearly gets him killed, but instead they only make him sweat in a beautifully constructed scene at a bowling alley where as he cautiously exits Coulting’s office with a bag full of money, you can hear the sound of the pins explode with each strike, a suspenseful reminder of the fearful anticipation pounding in his head.  Jack’s head swells with his apparent success, turning down the regular gig at the newspaper, despite Ellen’s protestations, believing the sky’s the limit for him now that he’s made a name for himself, where as an independent photographer he can sell to the highest bidder.  While playing such a dangerous game, Jack’s amorally loathsome character comes into question, as even Ellen decides he’s a callous opportunist where it’s only a matter of time before he falls from grace.  What’s interesting is the way the war plays on Jack’s post-war noir character, as a guy who witnesses the devastation of war comes home numbed by the experience with his values altered and disoriented, where his ambition erodes any personal integrity, developing an insatiable appetite for sordid sensationalism, which brings him a quick buck, but likely an early demise, as he continually flaunts and disparages the wrong kind of people.  The finale is more comical irony, as it’s hard not to root *against* this guy.