Reservoir Dogs - Fail

Title: Reservoir Dogs

Genre: Crime/Thriller/(Drama)

Country: USA

Year: 1992

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Harvey Keitel; Tim Roth; Chris Penn; Steve Buscemi; Lawrence Tierney; Michael Madsen; Quentin Tarantino

Plot: After one coup goes very wrong, the remaining gangsters suspect that there's a police informant amongst them and they're trying to figure out who the snitch is. Cue more violence, confusion and mistrust.

Bedchel Test:

At least 2 Women? No woman whatsoever. I think I spotted some walking past in the distant background.

Talking? ... No women=no talking.

...About something other than men? "

Opinion:

I didn't expect this to pass the Bedchel test, however I was surprised by the fact that there is NO woman at all. And there are quite a few people in the movie all in all. This mixed with the sexism portrayed makes for an uncomfortable watch. The only time a woman is talked about is this conversation "What about this woman's ass?" "Sitting on my dick."

There is one interesting shout-out to waitresses and their

Now, the uncomfortable sexism and machoism (which is almost to be expected from a gangster movie, of course...) aside, is this a good watch?

Eh. I'm not sure. There's also the uncomfortable Tarantino violence that doesn't make you think "this is vile but interesting for a portrayal of the story" but that always borders on the line of glorification. Most times in his debut it still works as it creates the backbone of the story: these guys are merciless violent criminals. At other times it just seems too much of Tarantino's wet dream. "Hey, I can't go around cutting people's ears off, let my characters do that instead!" Badass.

Also of course: This movie is hyped to no end which explains my disappointment. Yes, the story works. Yes, there's an interesting climax and no, the movie is not bad. But why is it hailed as such an indie classic? Besides the violence? Oh right, that's it. That's the one original part, the strangely artistic violence within this story. Sorry, I'm not against gore and blood as such, but it doesn't make a movie more interesting as such! And if you take it away, you got just this: a classic gangster movie. Which is okay, it does work as entertainment, but it's hardly innovative or groundbreaking.

My favourite parts of the movie happened when they sat down and talked about random things. But then again, that would be me being all womanly and wanting dialogue and character development in a story, I guess.

Yes, you can watch it, if you're fine with (mainly) underlying sexism, violence, oh and a lot of swearing (which I tend to not notice...) then you might enjoy it. But don't expect anything unusual. It's still the same gangster-thing set in the same white-man-in suits world.