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Now that we know Quentin Tarantino can make a movie like "Reservoir Dogs," it's time for him to move on and make a better one.

This film, the first from an obviously talented writer-director, is like an exercise in style. He sets up his characters during a funny scene in a coffee shop, and then puts them through a stickup that goes disastrously wrong. Most of the movie deals with its bloody aftermath, as they assemble in a warehouse and bleed and drool on one another.

The movie has one of the best casts you could imagine, led by the legendary old tough guy Lawrence Tierney , who has been in and out of jail both on the screen and in real life. He is incapable of uttering a syllable that sounds inauthentic. Tierney plays Joe Cabot, an experienced criminal who has assembled a team of crooks for a big diamond heist. The key to his plan is that his associates don't know one another, and therefore can't squeal if they're caught. He names them off a color chart: Mr. White, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink, and so on. Mr. Pink doesn't like his name. "You're lucky you ain't Mr. Yellow," Tierney rasps.

The opening scene features an endlessly circling camera, as the tough guys light cigarettes and drink coffee in one of those places where the tables are Formica and the waitresses write your order on a green-and-white Guest Check. They argue, joke and b.s. each other through thick clouds of smoke; it's like "The Sportswriters on Parole." There's a funny discussion of tipping. Then they walk out of the restaurant, and are introduced in the opening credits, as they walk menacingly toward the camera. They have great faces: The glowering Michael Madsen ; the apprehensive Tim Roth ; Chris Penn , ready for anything; Tierney, with a Mack truck of a mug; Harvey Keitel , whose presence in a crime movie is like an imprimatur.

The movie feels like it's going to be terrific, but Tarantino's script doesn't have much curiosity about these guys. He has an idea, and trusts the idea to drive the plot.

The idea is that the tough guys, except for Tierney and the deranged Madsen, are mostly bluffers. They are not good at handling themselves in desperate situations.

We see the bungled crime in flashbacks. Tarantino has a confident, kinetic way of shooting action - guys running down the street, gun battles, blood and screams. Then the action centers in the warehouse, where Madsen sadistically toys with a character he thinks is a cop, and the movie ends on a couple of notes of horrifying poetic justice.

One of the discoveries in the movie is Madsen, who has done a lot of acting over the years (he had a good role in " The Natural ") but here emerges with the kind of really menacing screen presence only a few actors achieve; he can hold his own with the fearsome Tierney, and reminds me a little of a very mean Robert De Niro .

Tarantino himself is also interesting as an actor; he could play great crazy villains.

As for the movie, I liked what I saw, but I wanted more. I know the story behind the movie - Tarantino promoted the project from scratch, on talent and nerve - and I think it's quite an achievement for a first-timer. It was made on a low budget. But the part that needs work didn't cost money. It's the screenplay. Having created the characters and fashioned the outline, Tarantino doesn't do much with his characters except to let them talk too much, especially when they should be unconscious from shock and loss of blood.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Rated R Strong Violence, Language

Harvey Keitel as Mr. White

Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde

Tim Roth as Mr. Orange

Written and Directed by

• Quentin Tarantino

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Reservoir Dogs Reviews

A fond genre move that's forever chortling up its sleeve at the puerile idiocy of the genre, a heist caper without a heist, an action movie that's hopelessly in love with talk and a poem to the sexiness of storytelling.

Full Review | Jan 12, 2024

Reservoir Dogs is an impressive debut that reflects Tarantino's unique, postmodern style and points towards things to come.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2023

Precisely plotted and engagingly juggled into a rich swirl of flashbacks that wind through the current crisis, this is the work of a director who loves movies and a storyteller engaged with the art of telling stories.

Full Review | Feb 4, 2023

The film possesses a stomach-churning urgency following a deceptively languid opening...

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 30, 2022

I still think this lean, merciless and hellishly funny debut might be the best thing he ever made...

Full Review | Nov 30, 2022

An indie cult classic from the 90s, here's a film that's oozed cool all the way through thanks to the combo of a fiery set of character actors led by the intense Harvey Keitel, and its sharp ear for dialogue filled with profanity and pop culture.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Nov 19, 2022

While it borrows generously from a number of other films, the way Tarantino structures his crime drama is a breath of fresh air.

Full Review | Nov 17, 2022

... if one considers this initial film as it is, a stamp made from a storyteller just getting started, "Reservoir Dogs" maintains its strength and vitality. All of which are improved by the UHD experience.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2022

Quentin Tarantino hit a home run with his feature debut, Reservoir Dogs, and cinema would never be the same.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 15, 2022

The story is as phony as the names the robbers take - Mr. White, Mr. Blue, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown - and it's also a hymn to violence, blood and sadism that reaches repulsive levels.

Full Review | Oct 14, 2022

What I consider Tarantino’s masterstroke is the men’s-room scene.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Aug 31, 2022

It is the most dreadful movie ever made or, at least, ever given a general release. By this I do not mean that it is dreadfully bad or, even dreadfully sad. I wish to signify that it is evil.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2022

The wafer-thin plot gets stretched far with smart, nonlinear weaves and a masterful cast crowned by Michael Madsen's trigger-happy psychopath and Lawrence Tierney's amiably gruff head honcho.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2020

An amazing narrative prodigy that is the story of a spoiled robbery which, right now, I would point out as Tarantino's masterpiece. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 30, 2019

Tarantino's jumbling of his chronology and the clever changes of context from the claustrophobic warehouse section to various character origin flashbacks are sly and electric

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2018

There are good performances all around as Reservoir Dogs veers to its ironic, almost absurdist climax. In addition to his clever plotting, Tarantino has given his cast sharp, acrid, sometimes witty dialogue.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2018

And while Tarantino never quite succeeds in putting around each character the sense of isolation that marks the best noirs, he carries off this exercise in lively fashion. It's more purple than noir, but it's got juice.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2018

No one should go to Reservoir Dogs without prior thought. But what they will see is a riveting treatise on the theme of betrayal set in an urban wasteland that murders hope and makes redemption virtually impossible.

Full Review | Mar 20, 2018

As QT's first film as both writer and director, Reservoir Dogs indicates a remarkably fully formed cinematic sensibility.

Full Review | May 18, 2017

The exaggerated raw violence of "Reservoir Dogs" leaves one feeling cheated in the end. For this movie isn't really about anything. It's just a flashy, stylistically daring exercise in cinematic mayhem.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 21, 2016

• Cast & crew
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Metacritic reviews

Reservoir dogs.

• 100 Entertainment Weekly Ty Burr Entertainment Weekly Ty Burr You may not like the terms Tarantino sets, but you have to admit he succeeds on them.
• 100 San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle A brutal movie, brutal in all the right ways -- brutally stark, brutally funny, brutally brutal. [30 Oct 1992]
• 100 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen Reservoir Dogs sizzles - it's dynamite on a short fuse, and you watch it with mesmerized fascination, simultaneously attracted and repelled by the explosion you know will come.
• 90 Film Threat Brad Laidman Film Threat Brad Laidman The truth is that for all the controversy there really isn’t that much violence in Reservoir Dogs. The reason people were so affected was because the film shows you the true impact of its violence.
• 90 Time Richard Corliss Time Richard Corliss Most of the movie is Actors Acting: gifted guys (Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn) running nattering riffs on familiar lout themes. [16 Nov 1992]
• 88 USA Today Mike Clark USA Today Mike Clark Too lingeringly creepy to ignore. [23 Oct 1992]
• 80 Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum It's unclear whether this macho thriller does anything to improve the state of the world or our understanding of it, but it certainly sets off enough rockets to hold us and shake us for every one of its 99 minutes.
• 78 Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov Though its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, Tarantino has created a movie with all the gritty punch of a .44 in the belly.
• 70 Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan Tarantino's palpable enthusiasm, his unapologietic passion for what he's created, reinvigorates this venerable plot and, mayhem aside, makes it involving for longer than you might suspect. [27 Oct 1992]
• 63 Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel Tarantino's debut directing job acknowledges the sloppiness and silences that are typically squeezed out of most crime films, but we get the point early on and the remainder is macho posturing. [23 Oct 1992]
• See all 24 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Reservoir Dogs

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Mpaa rating, produced by, released by, reservoir dogs (1992), directed by quentin tarantino / lawrence bender.

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Review by Lucia Bozzola

A study in violence and pop hoodlum cool, Quentin Tarantino's debut film adrenalized the gangster film and put Tarantino on the auteur map. Adapting the novelistic structure of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956) and using observational long takes, Tarantino shifts between the preparations for an ill-fated heist and its extraordinarily bloody aftermath, increasing tension through the gradual revelation of each color-coded character's true nature as they figure out what went wrong. As in Howard Hawks's and Sam Peckinpah's films, the driving concern is honor among men, but, as in the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Tarantino's crooks also define themselves through a plethora of pop culture references, from Lee Marvin to the "Stuck in the Middle With You" ear-slicing and the opening exegesis of Madonna songs. Drawing praise and fire on the film festival circuit for juxtaposing humor and brutal violence, and attacked for being too indebted to the Hong Kong action film City on Fire (1987), Reservoir Dogs opened to critical acclaim, jump-starting former video clerk Tarantino's career. Although its extreme bloodshed hampered its box office, Reservoir Dogs's postmodern generic self-awareness went on to be almost as influential on 1990s gangster movies as Tarantino's next film, Pulp Fiction (1994).

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

4K Ultra HD Review – Reservoir Dogs (1992)

November 11, 2022 by admin

Reservoir Dogs , 1992.

Directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Quentin Tarantino, Chris Penn, Eddie Bunker, Lawrence Tierney, and Kirk Baltz.

Quentin Tarantino’s sensational debut feature gets a 4K UHD makeover for its 30th anniversary.

As the years tick by, the tedious inevitability of time dictates that the things we hold dear from days gone by start to get old and irrelevant which, in the world of the film fan, means we start to see the release of anniversary editions of movies we still think of as new(ish) or contemporary. 2022 will bring about a few notable anniversaries but probably none so poignant as the 30th anniversary of Quentin Tarantino’s groundbreaking debut feature Reservoir Dogs , which is being re-release as a 4K UHD in a rather fetching Steelbook.

Love him or loathe him, you cannot deny that the release of a new Quentin Tarantino movie is still an event, and when you are thirty years into a filmmaking career that is an impressive place to be, especially with the ever-changing trends that come and go in the entertainment world. However, with these anniversary reissues comes the opportunity to go back, reassess and see where all of those trademarks and, sometimes divisive, stylistic traits come from, and, rather pleasingly, Reservoir Dogs is still a monumental tour-de-force of style and substance.

If you have never seen it, the plot is basically a snapshot into what happens after a robbery, only this bank robbery is a botched one, where the gang didn’t all get away clean. Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) is the mastermind who has put together a group of criminals to commit a jewellery heist, and each criminal is given his own identity in order to remain anonymous. There’s Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker) and Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino), as well as Joe’s son ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie (Chris Penn) to oversee things, but Mr. Blonde is a little unhinged and starts shooting, causing the police to arrive and bedlam to ensue, splitting up the group as they try to escape.

This being Tarantino, you don’t see the heist and you don’t see Mr. Blonde apparently losing it. Instead, you get snippets of the various character’s escapes in flashback as Mr. White and Mr. Orange arrive at the meeting point, with Mr. Orange bleeding out from a bullet to the stomach. Once the other characters start to arrive and piece together what happened they realise that one of the group is a rat, and this is when the paranoia sets in.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and watching Reservoir Dogs now, when the opening credits start to the dulcet tones of Steven Wright’s ‘K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies’ radio show, you know you are in for a treat. Even more so when we are presented with the opening scene of the main characters sitting around a table discussing Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ in what still ranks as one of Tarantino’s finest moments, the dialogue sharp, witty and, above all, real, especially when Mr. Pink waxes lyrical about tipping and why he doesn’t believe in it.

Tarantino gets a lot of flak these days for being self-indulgent with his dialogue – in some cases, deservedly so – and you could accuse him of spending his entire career trying to recreate character’s speeches with the same vitality and ending up copying himself – again, also a valid point – but thirty years on this scene still feels as fresh and contemporary as the day audiences first saw it, and that really sums up how Reservoir Dogs is as a whole.

We could spend all day picking scenes and breaking them down, but chances are if you are going to purchase this disc then you are already familiar with the movie, and so what you really want to know is does the film look any better in 4K UHD and is it worth the upgrade if you already own it on Blu-ray? Well, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’ as Reservoir Dogs has never looked so fantastic.

Obviously, the reds of the copious amounts of blood flung about pops out of the screen, almost covering it from the inside of your TV, and the blacks and whites of the character’s suits all look suitably sharp, but what stands out the most is the natural skin tones and sheen of polish that gives the movie the feel of a classic; the warm tone that a lot of older movies shot on film have, that given the proper restoration treatment brings out a lot of details that you may not have noticed before, transcending the movie from its independent film roots and adding a bit of, for want of a better word, class.

Coming housed in a gleefully gruesome Steelbook, the extras (on the Blu-ray disc only) include deleted scenes and a couple of archive featurettes covering the movie and the characters, but you aren’t getting this for the extras – you’re getting it because it is the perfect upgrade of a classic movie that still feels like it was only released last week.

Quentin Tarantino may have made bigger movies and he may have made (technically) better movies, but will we be celebrating the 30th anniversaries of The Hateful Eight or Django Unchained with quite the same reverence or affection? Unlikely, but until we find that out this excellent edition serves to remind us how vital Reservoir Dogs and Quentin Tarantino were/are to the movie industry and, more importantly, that the 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction is only two years away…

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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Review/Film; A Caper Goes Wrong, Resoundingly

By Vincent Canby

• Oct. 23, 1992

It's been an unusually good year for the discovery of first-rate new American film directors: Barry Primus ("Mistress"), Nick Gomez ("Laws of Gravity"), Allison Anders ("Gas Food Lodging") and Carl Franklin ("One False Move"), among others. Now add to the list the name of Quentin Tarantino, the young writer and director of "Reservoir Dogs," a small, modestly budgeted crime movie of sometimes dazzling cinematic pyrotechnics and over-the- top dramatic energy. It may also be one of the most aggressively brutal movies since Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs."

"Reservoir Dogs" is about a Los Angeles jewelry store robbery masterminded by a tough old mob figure named Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney). The principal characters are introduced in an extended precredit sequence in which the thieves are seen relaxing over lunch sometime before the job.

The camera looks on with the indifference of a waitress who expects no tip. One guy holds forth on the meaning of the lyrics of popular songs, with special emphasis on the oeuvre of Madonna. His discoveries are no more profound than those of academe, but his obscene jargon, which disgusts some of his colleagues, is refreshingly blunt and more comprehensible than any deconstructionist's. It's a brilliant scene-setter.

Cut to the initial postcredit sequence, just after the heist has been carried out and two of the hoods, played by Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth, are fleeing the scene. Mr. Keitel is at the wheel of the car while Mr. Roth lies across the back seat, bleeding badly and clutching his stomach as if to hold in the organs. Something obviously went wrong. One of the hoods became panicky during the holdup and began shooting. It's also apparent that the police had been tipped off. Mr. Roth begs to be taken to a hospital, or just dumped somewhere near a hospital, but Mr. Keitel refuses. They go on to the warehouse where the gang members were to meet according to the original plan.

Though all of the film's contemporary action takes place inside this warehouse, "Reservoir Dogs" cuts back and forth in time with neat efficiency to dramatize the origins of this soured caper. One of the elements of old Joe's plan was the anonymity of the men he hired for the job, to protect them from one another and from the police.

To this end he gave them noms de crime (Mr. White, Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange and so on), which especially offends the man dubbed Mr. Pink, who thinks it makes him sound like a sissy. In the course of the film, some of the men do reveal their real names, which leads to a certain amount of confusion for the audience when the men are talking about characters who are off screen.

Though small in physical scope, "Reservoir Dogs" is immensely complicated in its structure, which for the most part works with breathtaking effect. Mr. Tarantino uses chapter headings ("Mr. Blonde," "Mr. Orange," etc.) to introduce the flashbacks, which burden the film with literary affectations it doesn't need. Yet the flashbacks themselves never have the effect of interrupting the flow of the action. Mr. Tarantino not only can write superb dialogue, but he also has a firm grasp of narrative construction. The audience learns the identity of the squealer about mid-way through, but the effect is to increase tension rather than diminish it.

"Reservoir Dogs" moves swiftly and with complete confidence toward a climax that matches "Hamlet's" both in terms of the body count and the sudden, unexpected just desserts. It's a seriously wild ending, and though far from upbeat, it satisfies. Its dimensions are not exactly those of Greek tragedy. "Reservoir Dogs" is skeptically contemporary. Mr. Tarantino has a fervid imagination, but he also has the strength and talent to control it.

Like "Glengarry Glen Ross," another virtually all-male production, "Reservoir Dogs" features a cast of splendid actors, all of whom contribute equally to the final effect. Among the most prominent: Mr. Keitel, whose moral dilemma gives the film its ultimate meaning; Steve Buscemi, as the fellow who has thought long about the messages in Madonna's songs; Mr. Roth, the English actor who gives another amazing performance as a strictly American type; Chris Penn, as Mr. Tierney's son and heir; Michael Madsen, as a seemingly sane ex-con who isn't, and Mr. Tierney, who more or less presides over the movie.

The film also marks the American debut of Andrzej Sekula, the Polish-born director of photography. Mr. Sekula's work here is of an order to catapult him immediately into the front ranks. One of the principal reasons the film works so well is the sense of give-and-take that is possible only when two or more actors share the same image. Mr. Sekula and Mr. Tarantino have not been brainwashed by television movies. They don't depend on close-ups. "Reservoir Dogs" takes a longer view.

Pay heed: "Reservoir Dogs" is as violent as any movie you are likely to see this year, but though it's not always easy to watch, it has a point.

"Reservoir Dogs" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has a great deal of obscene language and scenes of explicit brutality, including one in which a policeman who is tied to a chair is attacked by a man with a razor. Reservoir Dogs Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino; director of photography, Andrzej Sekula; edited by Sally Menke; production designer, David Wasco; produced by Lawrence Bender; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 99 minutes. This film is rated R. Mr. White . . . Harvey Keitel Mr. Orange . . . Tim Roth Mr. Blonde . . . Michael Madsen Nice Guy Eddie . . . Chris Penn Mr. Pink . . . Steve Buscemi Joe Cabot . . . Lawrence Tierney Holdaway . . . Randy Brooks Marvin Nash . . . Kirk Baltz Mr. Blue . . . Eddie Bunker Mr. Brown . . . Quentin Tarantino

MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Is a Brash Comic Opera of Violence : SAN DIEGO COUNTY

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Like it or not (and many people will have their doubts), writer-director Quentin Tarantino has arrived, in your face and on the screen. His brash debut film, “Reservoir Dogs,” a showy but insubstantial comic opera of violence, is as much a calling card as a movie, an audacious high-wire act announcing that he is here and to be reckoned with.

Strong violence is Tarantino’s passion, and he embraces it with gleeful, almost religious, fervor. An energetic macho stunt, “Reservoir Dogs” (selected theaters) glories in its excesses of blood and profanity, delighting, in classic Grand Guignol fashion, in going as far over the top as the man’s imagination will take it.

Tarantino does have the filmmaking flair to go along with his zeal. Though “Reservoir Dogs’ ” story line of what happens when a well-planned robbery goes wrong is a staple of both B pictures and pulp fiction, Tarantino’s palpable enthusiasm, his unapologetic passion for what he’s created, reinvigorates this venerable plot and, mayhem aside, makes it involving for longer than you might suspect.

Tarantino’s background is as an actor and he has a gift for writing great bursts of caustic, quirky dialogue, verbal arias that show off not only his facility with scabrous, tough guy language but also the abilities of his performers. And it was that script that attracted excellent actors like Harvey Keitel (who also signed on as co-producer), Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Steve Buscemi to the film.

Tarantino’s writing style is clear from “Dogs’ ” opening set piece, focused around a table in a Los Angeles coffee shop where a group of seven nondescript men are just finishing up what looks to be a hearty breakfast. Tarantino (who cast himself as Mr. Brown) starts things off with an exaggeratedly profane exegesis on what Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” is really all about, followed by a cranky riff by Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) on why he doesn’t believe in tipping.

Almost immediately after this meal, there is a sudden cut to the bloody interior of a late-model car, where Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), shot so badly he seems almost to be drowning in his own blood, holds tight to the hand of a frantic Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) as he heads the car toward a prearranged rendezvous spot.

For five of those original seven breakfasters, each named (for security reasons) after a color and all identically dressed in black suits, white shirts, thin black ties and sunglasses, turn out to be participants in a robbery of a diamond wholesaler planned by the other two, Joe (Lawrence Tierney) and his son, Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn).

None of this is immediately obvious, coming into focus in bits and pieces, for Tarantino has broken his story up and told it non-chronologically. Energetic scenes of the shootout alternate with quiet flashbacks to the planning as well as the emotionally unstable situation at the rendezvous spot, as the surviving gang members scream bloody murder at each other, trying to figure out how an easy job turns into a fiasco while Mr. Orange swoons in his own blood on the floor.

This is definitely not the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, but rather a group of genuine hard guys, criminal professionals and proud of it, who know everything from how long the police take to respond to alarms, to which parts of the body are the most painful to be shot in. The type of crowd that follows the question of “Did you kill anybody?” with a perfectly natural “Any real people or just cops?”

Part of the appeal of “Reservoir Dogs’ ” (R-rated for strong violence and language) is the way it makes all this feel terribly authentic, a veracity that is a tribute to the skill of its actors. Though it seems a shame to pick favorites in one of the year’s most cohesive ensembles, three performers do stand out.

Steve Buscemi, also featured in the upcoming “In the Soup,” is deadpan funny as the cranky Mr. Pink; veteran Lawrence Tierney, with a voice like a tow-truck winch, is gruff as they get as the gang’s rapacious boss; and Michael Madsen, a veteran of “Thelma & Louise,” plays the unforgettable Mr. Blonde, the mellow sadist who loves 1970s music and provides “Reservoir Dogs” with its most talked-about moments of gory violence.

Though it’s impossible not to appreciate the undeniable skill and elan Tarantino brings to all this, it is also difficult not to wish “Reservoir Dogs” weren’t so determinedly one-dimensional, so in love with operatic violence at the expense of everything else. The old gangster movies its creator idolizes were better at balancing things, at adding creditable emotional connection and regret to their dead-end proceedings. As Tarantino makes more films (and his dance card is already quite crowded), perhaps he will see his way clear to going that one step beyond what he’s accomplished here. You could even, in the spirit of things, call it something to shoot for.

‘Reservoir Dogs’

Harvey Keitel: Mr. White

Tim Roth: Mr. Orange

Michael Madsen: Mr. Blonde

Chris Penn: Nice Guy Eddie

Steve Buscemi: Mr. Pink

Lawrence Tierney: Joe Cabot

Quentin Tarantino: Mr. Brown

Released by Mirimax Pictures. Director Quentin Tarantino. Producer Lawrence Bender. Executive producers Richard N. Gladstein, Ronna B. Wallace, Monte Hellman. Screenwriter Tarantino. Cinematographer Andrzej Sekula. Editor Sally Menke. Costumes Betsy Heimann. Music Karyn Rachtman. Production design David Wasco. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (strong violence and language).

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Reservoir Dogs Review

01 Jan 1992

Reservoir Dogs

Debuts are not meant to be like this. Debuts are either meant to be second spear-carrier minimalist or so cringingly inept that they find themselves in a side-splitting edition of Before They Were Famous.

Debuts are not meant to capture all the plaudits at Sundance before storming to cult status around the world and igniting a forest fire of newsprint in an endless debate about the morality of screen violence.

Few debuts — with the possible exceptions of The Clash's first album and The Marriage Feast at Cana — have been so widely admired. But above all, debuts in the crime genre are not meant to begin with an in-depth exposition of the lyrics to a Madonna song followed by a discussion on the ethics of paying gratuities and the problems experienced by women working on minimum wage.

With Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino started as he meant to go on. And what he meant to go on to be is evident from the opening shots of the movie: an auteur, no less. Simply to tell the story of a heist gone wrong would seem to have held little appeal to a writer as visually literate and soaked in film culture as Tarantino. It's almost as if he employs the flashback, "answers first, questions later" narrative structure to give himself a challenge. What really interests him is finding opportunities for dialogue diversions. And so it's no accident that our introduction to the diamond heist via Tim Roth making a mess of the upholstery doesn't arrive until after Mr. Brown's Like A Virgin speech and Mr. Pink's, "world's smallest violin" paean to non-tipping.

It helped, of course, that although Reservoir Dogs was Tarantino's directorial debut, he had already written screenplays for True Romance (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Not only did this enable him to hone his writing skills, but the flourishes necessary for auteur status were already coming together nicely. Aside from the-inclusion of the ubiquitous pop culture discussions (Get Christie Love, The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia) these would include a raft of self-referential allusions. Thus: Mr. White's former partner, Alabama (see True Romance) Mr. Blonde's real name, Toothpick Vic Vega (see Pulp Fiction's Vincent), Blonde's unseen parole officer being called Scagnetti (a name Tarantino has worked into every one of his screenplays to date). Not to mention the cameo performance of which he's become so fond.

It's one thing, however, to aspire to be an auteur, quite another to achieve it. In Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino assembles a cast of more widely mixed ability than the average comprehensive Year Eight, ranging from the acknowledged master (Keitel), through the talented youngsters (Buscemi and Roth) to the fairly abject (Madsen and, ahem, himself), but still draws compulsive performances from all. Primarily, this is down to the virtues of that script, packed with zinging one-liners and meaty speeches of the kind every aspiring thesp would kill to give. Everyone (apart from Mr. Blue — such a spare part he should have been sponsored by Lucas) enjoys their time in the sun.

It's not every debutante who has the cojones to aspire to auteur status and because of this (and the film's success) the Tarantino backlash arrived rapidly in the wake of the movie's acclaim. Similarities with Kubrick's The Killing and more pertinently Ringo Lam's City On Fire were pointed out. Others (Empire included) speculated long into the night over how Nice Guy Eddie met his demise. But most of the objections focused on the gratuitous ear-ectomy performed by Mr. Blonde on the hapless cop, Marvin Nash (as played by Kirk Baltz who despite turning up in Face/Off and Bulworth has never since enjoyed such success when acting with his full complement of aural organs).

The aged chestnut that is The Screen Violence Debate does not need another outing here except to say that it was particularly ironic that Tarantino took flak for the realism of his violence. The one thing Michael Madsen's soft-shoe-shuffle-and-slash is not is realistic.

Indeed, and this is not a criticism of the film, there is very little in Reservoir Dogs that could by any stretch be termed realistic. The world of diamond heists and crooks may be real enough, but once it has been refracted through Tarantino's pop-cultural sensibility it emerges as darkly comic and extremely knowing. Do criminals discuss 70s' cop shows en route to their jobs? Do old-timers like Mr. Blue really have an opinion on Madonna? Would Mr. Orange, having survived several gunshots, choose that particularly inopportune moment to confess all to Mr. White? The answer to all three is probably "No": something Quentin Tarantino understands implicitly and just one of the reasons why film is better than real life.

Reservoir Dogs also proves beyond reasonable doubt that Tarantino is a far better writer and director than he is an actor. If he's to achieve the status he clearly craves it will only be behind the camera. Fewer cameos in Little Nicky, please. More proper films. For Tarantino, it's time to get back to work.

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Reservoir Dogs (United States, 1992)

Reservoir Dogs grabs you by the throat and digs its claws in deep. From the moment that the unwitting viewer tumbles into the realm of Lawrence Tierney's gang of eight, they are hopelessly trapped there until the final credits roll. As the first outing for actor/director/ writer Quentin Tarantino, this is a triumph, displaying all the marks of a longtime virtuoso of the genre.

A jewelry store robbery has gone wrong - badly wrong - for the thieves. One member of the gang is dead, and several are missing. The survivors, including Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), and a critically-injured Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), are holed up in a warehouse, trying to figure out how to salvage the situation. Dissention and suspicion run high, as White and Pink discuss the possibility of a traitor in their midst, and the tension escalates when Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) shows up with a little surprise in the trunk of his car.

The cast, which includes Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, and Michael Madsen, is first-rate, and the parts the actors have to play are fully fleshed out. Tarantino invests each member of his group with a unique and multi-faceted personality. Not content with stereotypes, the writer/director digs deeper, bringing out the humanity in even someone as viciously sadistic and reprehensible as Mr. Blonde. To go along with the characters is a surprising plot, filled with wonderful little twists and turns, and pervaded throughout by the sense of not knowing what's around the corner. The non-chronological manner in which the story is told is confusing at first, but everything eventually sorts itself out.

Tarantino's directing influences, from John Woo to Martin Scorsese, are all in evidence, and their synthesis creates a high-voltage style that's entirely his own. The writing is crisp and clean, providing line after line of snappy dialogue designed to leave the viewer alternately pondering and laughing aloud. The gallows humor and dark comedy are among many of Reservoir Dogs ' defining elements. This is one of those rare motion pictures that's both intelligent and visceral at the same time.

Highly recommended with one caveat: those who are squeamish about blood should be wary. While the gore in this film isn't gratuitous, there's a great deal of it, and one particular torture scene is chillingly and vividly depicted. Gripping and gut-wrenching, Reservoir Dogs is likely to stay with you for a long time.

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The Glorious Bullshit of “Reservoir Dogs,” Twenty-Five Years Later

By Tom Shone

Like matching outfits for pop bands, the influence of Quentin Tarantino didn’t make it very far into the new century. “He is the single most influential director of his generation,” Peter Bogdanovich said, during an event at MOMA , in 2012, honoring the director, by which time it was customary to add the phrase “for better or worse.” To talk of Tarantino’s influence now is to do so with a wince or small cluck of nostalgia for that period, somewhere between the launch of the Hubble telescope and the impeachment of Bill Clinton, when you could barely find a coffee shop in Southern California that didn’t clatter with the sound of aspiring young screenwriters bashing out talky, violent, blackly comic shoot-’em-ups on their typewriters.

“I became an adjective sooner than I thought I was going to,” Tarantino noted, in 1994, when infatuation with his work was at its peak and a host of copycat films were in theatres. These days, with few exceptions, the trail of bickering hitmen, wild-card sociopaths, and hyper-articulate drug dealers arguing about the merits of “old” Aerosmith over “new” Aerosmith has gone cold. The twenty-fifth anniversary of Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” on October 8th, shapes up as an exercise in slightly nervous time travel, like a college reunion, or stumbling on a high-school crush on Facebook.

Nothing around “Reservoir Dogs,” though, has aged quite as badly as its original reviews. “The only thing Mr. Tarantino spells out is the violence,” Julie Salamon wrote in the Wall Street Journal . “This movie isn’t really about anything,” the Daily News said. “It’s just a flashy, stylistically daring exercise in cinematic mayhem.” These are the two canards that everyone seemed to agree upon, and they were the stances on which the Tarantino-bashing industry would be based. One, that his work was ultraviolent, and, two, that it was about nothing more than its own movieishness, with no connection to the real world. This was a myth partly abetted by the director himself, who often told the story of going to Harvey Keitel’s house to discuss the “Reservoir Dogs” script. “How’d you come to write this script? Did you live in a tough-guy neighborhood growing up? Was anybody in your family connected with tough guys?” Keitel asked. Tarantino said no. “Well, how the hell did you come to write this?” Keitel said. And Tarantino said, “I watch movies.”

Both of these metrics—how violent and how realistic a film is judged to be—are volatile commodities on the film-historical stock exchange. Nothing dates faster than “realism,” and today’s “excessive violence” is tomorrow’s cinematic aperitif. The first thing to strike a contemporary viewer of “Reservoir Dogs,” of course, is how comparatively nonviolent it is—we see a couple of shootouts, a carjacking, and a cop being beaten up, but nothing that you wouldn’t see today on an episode of “24.” To those coming to the film from the freewheeling mayhem of the director’s later work, it’s a remarkably disciplined feat of storytelling, featuring just as many departures from chronology as, say, “Pulp Fiction”—its structure is a nautilus-like series of boxed flashbacks, telling each character’s story in turn—but the flashbacks never feel like flashbacks. You’re never antsy to get back to the warehouse. Without an ounce of fat, at a trim ninety-nine minutes, the movie pierces like a bullet, leaving a clean hole.

The infamous ear-severing, which caused so many walkouts, is discreetly elided by a pan to a wall, and throughout he uses fade-outs to eerie, feline effect, with an implied tick-tock of an impervious fate. The first time it happens is the most powerful. From the sight of the Dogs walking in slow motion down the car lot, their banter about Madonna and tipping etiquette still ringing in our ears, the curtain comes down. We can hear the whimpering of Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) before we see him, squirming in bloody agony in the backseat of a car, with Mr. White (Keitel) at the steering wheel. The perennial theme of the heist movie—“the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley,” in the words of Robert Burns—is laid bare in a single cut.

So many great filmmakers have made their débuts with heist films—from Woody Allen’s “Take the Money and Run” to Michael Mann’s “Thief” to Wes Anderson’s “Bottle Rocket” to Bryan Singer’s “The Usual Suspects”—that it’s tempting to see the genre almost as an allegory for the filmmaking process. The model it offers first-time filmmakers is thus as much economic as aesthetic—a reaffirmation of the tenet that Jean-Luc Godard attributed to D. W. Griffith: “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” A man assembles a gang for the implementation of a plan that is months in the rehearsal and whose execution rests on a cunning facsimile of midmorning reality going undetected. But the plan meets bumpy reality, requiring feats of improvisation and quick thinking if the gang is to make off with its loot—and the filmmaker is to avoid going to movie jail. “An undercover cop has got to be like Marlon Brando,” the detective, Holdaway, tells Mr. Orange. He goes on:

The things you gotta remember are the details. The details sell your story. This particular story takes place in a men’s room. . . . You gotta know every detail there is to know about this commode. What you gotta do is take all them details and make ’em your own. While you’re doing that, remember that this story is about you . . . and how you perceived the events that went down. The only way to do that is keep sayin’ it and sayin’ it and sayin’ it.

This is as close to an aesthetic credo as Tarantino ever got, from the intense focus on subjectivity that would turn the structure of “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” into Swiss cheese; to his fascination with commodes as the ultimate arbiter of gritty reality; to, above all, his deep, disciplined devotion to spoken English—his dialogue “part Robert Towne, part Chester Himes and part Patricia Highsmith,” as the critic Elvis Mitchell put it. Critics who complain about the lack of reality in Tarantino’s films aren’t listening: reality in his films is received, represented, and reproduced through the ear and the mouth and, in particular, the filthy, propulsive rhythms of black street vernacular soaked up by the filmmaker when he was a teen-ager in Los Angeles’s South Bay area, and to which he would return when he shot “Jackie Brown,” some twenty years later:

BEAUMONT : I’m still scared as a motherfucker, O.D. They talking like they serious as hell giving me time for that machine-gun shit. ORDELL : Aw, come on, man, they just trying to put a fright in your ass. BEAUMONT : Well, if that’s what they doin’, they done did it. ORDELL : How old is that machine-gun shit? BEAUMONT : About three years . . . ORDELL : Three years? That’s a old crime, man! They ain’t got enough room for all the niggas running around killing people today, now how are they gonna find room for you?

People tend to think of “Pulp Fiction” as Tarantino’s essential L.A. movie—only at the intersections of Glendale would it be apropos for Butch (Bruce Willis) to run into Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) while stopped at a red light—but his first three movies are all equally rooted in the nondescript environs of downtown Los Angeles: “Jackie Brown” in the depressing sprawl of ticky-tacky tract houses, strip joints, and malls near LAX, “Reservoir Dogs” in the coffee shops and diners of Highland Park, and the funeral home in Burbank that doubled as the gang’s rendezvous point. “Reservoir Dogs,” shot in just under five weeks—thirty days—in the summer of 1991, beneath lights so bright that the fake blood dried to the floor, is much more of a hood movie than you probably remember. For all its confinement to that warehouse, you never forget the city outside its door. When Mr. Blonde interrupts his torture of the cop to fetch some gasoline from the trunk of his car, he is followed by a Steadicam, and, as the sound of Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” retreats on the soundtrack, it is replaced by the soporific sounds of suburban L.A. going about its midmorning business: birds, children playing. Tarantino said that the sequence was his favorite thing in the entire film.

Carefully rooted in place, the film is a little blurrier when it comes to time—not so much ageless as occupying its own peculiar pocket of cultural space-time. With their natty black suits and skinny ties, Tarantino’s gang members look like gangsters from Jean-Pierre Melville’s thrillers of the late fifties and early sixties, but they argue like coffee-shop philosophes from the nineteen-nineties, while their pop-culture intake—Pam Grier movies, the TV shows “Get Christie Love!” and “Honey West”—stretches back to Tarantino’s childhood in the nineteen-seventies:

NICE GUY EDDIE : Remember that TV show “Get Christie Love” . . . about the black female cop? She always used to say, “You’re under arrest, sugar!” MR. PINK : What was the name of the chick who played Christie Love? MR. WHITE : Pam Grier. MR. ORANGE : No, it wasn’t Pam Grier. Pam Grier was the other one. Pam Grier did the film. “Christie Love” was like a Pam Grier TV show without Pam Grier. MR. PINK : So who was Christie Love? MR. ORANGE : How the fuck should I know? MR. PINK : Great. Now I’m totally fuckin’ tortured.

The idea of pop-culture-literate characters is now so ubiquitous that when the prison inmates of this summer’s “ Logan Lucky ” pause in the middle of a riot to discuss “Games of Thrones,” we barely blink. By the late eighties, thanks to the ubiquity of the home-entertainment revolution that had first given employment to Tarantino and his buddies at Video Archives, pop culture had attained such critical mass that it was beginning to show up on its own radar. On “Seinfeld,” by 1990, Jerry and George could be heard debating whether Superman had a sense of humor or not. (“I never heard him say anything really funny.”) Just a year earlier, in “Die Hard,” Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber taunts John McClane (Bruce Willis), “Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he’s John Wayne? Rambo?” To which McClane replies, “I was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers actually . . . yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”—the best line of Tarantino dialogue not actually written by Tarantino.

Tarantino’s influence became so wide that it influences the very notion of influence: what had hitherto been an unconscious borrowing or homage was now flushed out into the open and worn as a badge of one’s pop-cultural savvy—intertextuality hits the multiplex. Never mind that Tarantino’s original intent was straightforward realism. Most movie characters, he thought, talked about the plot too much. “Most of us don’t talk about the plot in our lives,” he noted. “We talk all around things. We talk about bullshit.” The gang members in “Reservoir Dogs” talk about Pam Grier and Silver Surfer comics and Madonna lyrics not because Tarantino wanted movie characters who sounded like him and his friends. His first three films are black comedies that drop movieish happenings—a heist, a kidnapping, an overdose—into the laps of characters who freak out, panic, squabble, lose their car in the parking lot, or miss out on the action entirely because they are on the john. They ask, What if a thriller or a heist movie or a cop movie happened, but its participants were too dozy to notice?

You have only to look at the “Kill Bill” films, from 2003 and 2004, in which blood the color of raspberries spurts comically from the stumps of severed arms and torsos, and B-movie storm clouds hurl B-movie rain, to realize just how much more rooted in reality—in the locales and linguistic idioms of Tarantino’s immediate neighborhood—his first films are. “This is the movie-movie universe, where movie conventions are embraced, almost fetishized,” the director said. “As opposed to the other universe where ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ take place, in which reality and movie conventions collide.” Which is another way of saying that the great comic engine of his early films—between movieish happenings and un-movieish characters—is gone at a stroke. You notice it most when they open their mouths. The characters in “Kill Bill” talk of taking their “satisfaction” with one another, and use the pronouns “whom” and “one” (“When one manages the difficult task of becoming queen of the Tokyo underworld, one doesn’t keep it a secret, does one?”) like eighteenth-century fops. They sound as if they had swallowed dictionaries.

VERNITA : Be that as it may, I know I do not deserve mercy or forgiveness. However, I beseech you for both on behalf of my daughter.

“Be that as it may?” “Beseech?” Tarantino’s writing always had its higher register, of course, but it was punctuated and brought down to earth by his love of street talk. That is the central clash driving Vincent and Jules’s co-Socratic dialogues in “Pulp Fiction.”

VINCENT : Jules, did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits that he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings? Have you ever heard that?

JULES : Get the fuck out my face with that shit! The motherfucker that said that shit never had to pick up itty-bitty pieces of skull on account of your dumb ass.

But “Pulp Fiction,” the first independent film to break two hundred million dollars at the box office, had turned Miramax into a mini-major studio, effectively bringing to an end the great indie-studio divide that “Reservoir Dogs” had first bridged: if “Dogs” was the Sundance-workshopped hit that brought guns and genre back into the indie field, “Kill Bill” completed the circle. It was a box-office call to arms that went up against “The Matrix,” from a filmmaker who, like his protagonist had, for a while, sought to escape his reputation as the “gun guy.”

BILL : I’m calling you a killer. A natural born killer. Moving to El Paso, working in a used record store, goin’ to the movies with Tommy, clipping coupons. That’s you, trying to disguise yourself as a worker bee. That’s you tryin’ to blend in with the hive. But you’re not a worker bee. You’re a renegade killer bee. And no matter how much beer you drank or barbecue you ate or how fat your ass got, nothing in the world would ever change that.

Tarantino could be talking to himself. He, like Beatrix, had tried to become a worker bee, make movies like “Jackie Brown”—granular, textured neighborhood films that matured the talent that had made ”Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction”—but when that movie was seen as “disappointing” at the box office, he retreated, stung, into the “movie-movie universe” and returned with a movie that came good on all the things he had once been accused of—“Kill Bill” is the “flashy, stylistically daring exercise in cinematic mayhem” that reviewers had once claimed to find in “Reservoir Dogs.” He became his worst reviews, rather in the manner of a boy who, falsely accused of something, decides that he might as well do the thing for which he has already been punished.

It is the fate of all great filmmakers to become adjectives—and their great challenge to resist, shedding skins like a snake, if need be. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” marks the last film that Steven Spielberg would make in full innocence of what the term Spielbergian meant. Similarly, “Taxi Driver” marks the end of Martin Scorsese’s innocence, as “Blue Velvet” did David Lynch’s. These days, Tarantino seems engaged less in self-parody than in urgent self-comfort. The further he strays, geographically and temporally, from contemporary L.A.—to wartime France, in “Inglourious Basterds”; to the slave-owning South, in “Django Unchained”; to post-Civil War Wyoming in “The Hateful Eight”—the more he seems to wrap himself in the quilt of genre. But nobody, it is safe to say, is imitating these films. As Jules Winnfield says, in a different context, in “Pulp Fiction,” it “ain’t the same fuckin’ ballpark, it ain’t the same league, it ain’t even the same fuckin’ sport.” This killer bee needs to come home.

Portions of this are adapted from Tom Shone’s “ Tarantino: A Retrospective ,” published on October 3rd, by Insight Editions.

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By Richard Brody

The 10 Best Gangster Movies That Are Also Thrillers, Ranked

Yeah see, these here movies are making me kind of nervous, see.

Say what you want about crime in real life, but when it’s depicted in a work of fiction, it can often be exciting. Crime movies come in many shapes and sizes, but arguably the most prominent sub-genre within the broader crime genre is the gangster movie . Given these revolve around mobsters, shady individuals, or authority figures tasked with taking down such people, most gangster movies are at least somewhat thrilling just for including gangsters as characters.

But then there are other gangster movies that go one step further when it comes to providing viewers with thrills, incorporating elements of genuine thriller movies into the proceedings . The following movies all do this to some extent, being classifiable as both gangster/crime movies and thrillers, with such classic genre hybrids being ranked below from great to greatest.

10 'Get Carter' (1971)

Director: mike hodges.

Michael Caine had a mammoth acting career , finding breakout success in the 1960s and only officially retiring in 2023, at the age of 90. Given the high number of films he appeared in, some of his classics are rather underrated , but thankfully, Get Carter is one that’s generally held up as one of his best and most iconic, especially when it comes to his earlier roles.

Caine plays a methodical and skilled criminal named Jack Carter, with this gangster movie taking a turn toward the realm of revenge thriller when Carter’s brother is killed, and he stops at nothing to seek vengeance for this act. Get Carter isn’t an action movie, but it is violent, and also benefits from having a generally good pace . It’s quick enough to feel like a thriller, but not overblown in a way that risks things getting too silly. It’s a slick, quietly tense, and, in some ways, timeless British gangster flick.

Rent on Apple TV

9 'Tokyo Drifter' (1966)

Director: seijun suzuki.

There’s an entire world of exciting yakuza movies that don’t tend to get the recognition they deserve outside Japan , with some of the best at least gaining cult status, to some extent, internationally. One of the best of these Japanese gangster movies is Tokyo Drifter , which could also qualify as one of the boldest and strangest, thanks to how hypnotic the visuals are and how striking the editing/presentation overall is.

It's more about the style than the narrative, but there is still a compelling story here, following a yakuza gang member getting targeted by an assassin, leading to a cat-and-mouse chase, all the while the gangster tries to work out who’s betrayed him and ordered the hit. Tokyo Drifter is fast and furious (hey, a little like that other movie with a similar title ), and packs plenty of thrills into its tight 83-minute runtime.

Watch on Criterion

8 'The Untouchables' (1987)

Director: brian de palma.

You’d hope that combining the talents of Brian De Palma as a director with the leading man abilities of Kevin Costner , plus throwing in supporting turns from Sean Connery and Robert De Niro – would lead to something great. Thankfully, The Untouchables is a movie that throws all these talented people together (plus others, like David Mamet writing the screenplay and Ennio Morricone composing the score) and emerges as something genuinely great.

The Untouchables is set during the Prohibition era and is a fictionalized retelling of how the police took down Al Capone , turning the tables by fighting back with aggression against his ruthless criminal empire. It’s a gangster movie where the gangsters take a backseat, sure, but they still drive the conflict , and the film does explore, to some extent, what happens when police start to use violence almost as liberally as the criminals they’re pursuing to achieve their goals.

The Untouchables

Watch on Paramount+

7 'White Heat' (1949)

Director: raoul walsh.

White Heat is undoubtedly one of the best gangster movies released during Hollywood’s Golden Age , and also among the final ones, serving as a powerful last hurrah for this style of crime film. It follows James Cagney at his biggest and most magnetic, playing a relentless criminal who wastes no time following a prison break, reassembling his gang and planning a complex heist.

It’s not a spoiler to say that the heist doesn’t go perfectly to plan, with White Heat then mining plenty of excitement and suspense from exploring the consequences of things not working out the way Cagney’s character hoped they would. It moves incredibly fast for a crime movie of its age, and everything builds up to an unforgettable and iconic finale that elevates an already very good gangster movie into the realm of greatness.

Watch on Tubi

6 'The Long Good Friday' (1980)

Director: john mackenzie.

Saying the words “British gangster movie” will often conjure up images of the crime movies directed by Guy Ritchie , but going back a few years before he began making movies does reveal some gangster classics that were likely influential in the development of his style . Case in point, The Long Good Friday , which blends dark comedy, thrills, suspense, and an exceedingly unlucky main character into one tense and entertaining film.

The Long Good Friday cemented Bob Hoskins as more than just a character actor , as he largely carries the movie, playing an ambitious gangster in London who wants to branch out and become at least somewhat legit, even though the universe seems to have other plans for him . It’s a unique gangster film and one that holds up extremely well more than four decades on from its initial release.

The Long Good Friday

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5 'Le Samouraï' (1967)

Director: jean-pierre melville.

Le Samouraï is another unique type of gangster movie, taking place in a shady criminal underworld where many criminals hide their true intentions, and the protagonist, a doomed hitman, doesn’t know who to trust. The movie follows him as he’s targeted by both the law and rival gangsters, the former trying to capture and imprison him and the latter stopping at nothing to kill him outright.

It’s an arthouse crime movie , in a way, with the thriller elements understated, thanks to the slow-burn nature of the storytelling. But Le Samouraï never feels boring, because it’s always precise and controlled, not to mention exceptionally stylish . And, when all else fails, the film's also got a lot of Alain Delon , given he plays the lead role, and it’s not a bold claim or anything to say that he’s easy on the eyes.

Le Samouraï

4 'infernal affairs' (2002), directors: andrew lau wai-keung, alan mak.

As far as gangster movies made outside the U.S. go, few are better than Infernal Affairs . Its premise is an airtight one, seeing not just one character go undercover, but two. First, there’s a detective who goes undercover to infiltrate a dangerous group of gangsters, and then there’s a criminal from that group who himself manages to infiltrate the police force.

So begins a psychologically dizzying fight between these two people who’re hiding their true identities, though the first thing either needs to do, of course, is uncover the identity of the other before confronting him. This all makes Infernal Affairs work as a fantastically gripping exploration of two opposing sides – the police and a criminal gang – at odds with each other because of the law, as well as a thrilling/tense battle of wits between two men who’ve both placed themselves in great danger .

Infernal Affairs

3 'reservoir dogs' (1992), director: quentin tarantino.

Reservoir Dogs is an explosive film, both for the content featured and for the fact that it propelled Quentin Tarantino to fame, establishing him as a writer/director to be reckoned with . It’s a unique and admirably grounded take on the heist genre, following a group of gangsters who try to pull off a jewelry store robbery, only for things to spiral out of control.

This leads to certain members being viewed suspiciously, given it seems likely the heist only went wrong because someone in the group was actually an undercover cop . Reservoir Dogs plays around with chronology, and does so in a way that makes things more intense and surprising, rather than less. It’s an energetic movie that’s never boring, even for a second, and honestly, crime movies don’t get much tighter or more ferocious.

Reservoir Dogs

2 'gangs of wasseypur' (2012), director: anurag kashyap.

Both parts of Gangs of Wasseypur are long, exceeding 2.5 hours, so watching the duology as a single film means having to find a bit over five hours to spare. That might sound like a big ask, but this epic movie is worth the time, because it tells an ambitious story filled with twisted and compelling characters that’s also truly unpredictable , said narrative spanning decades and following three different generations wrapped up in a violent gang war.

It's also hard to classify Gangs of Wasseypur when it comes to genre, seeing as it crosses over into so many throughout its lengthy runtime. It’s naturally a gangster film, and it also has a great deal of action, dark comedy, and enough tense sequences to make it often feel like a thriller. It’s daring and bold to a fault, in almost too many ways to count, and is one of the most exciting gangster epics ever made.

Gangs of Wasseypur

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1 'The Departed' (2006)

Director: martin scorsese.

Martin Scorsese’s legacy shouldn’t be exclusively tied to the crime/gangster genres, because his body of work is more diverse than many give it credit for . That being said, some of his best and most famous movies have involved a look at life in the mob, usually with a dramatic and/or darkly comedic edge. Thrillers by Scorsese are a little less common , but The Departed is one of his best and most thrilling… not to mention, it’s also a gangster movie.

Plot-wise, The Departed has the same premise as Infernal Affairs , being a remake of that aforementioned 2002 film. The pacing’s a little different, as is the ending, and there are a few more fleshed-out side characters, too, but both films work for largely the same reasons. The Departed is similarly nail-biting, functioning as both a great crime movie and an excellent thriller, and is about as good as gangster-thriller movies can get .

The Departed

NEXT: The Best War Movies That Are Also Thrillers, Ranked

Steve Buscemi Attacked: 66-Year-Old Actor Punched in Face

By Vansh Mehra

Steve Buscemi , known for Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, and others, was recently attacked by a mystery man. Walking on the streets of Manhattan, he was randomly struck by a punch and was taken to the hospital immediately.

Actor Steve Buscemi assaulted in Midtown Manhattan

On May 8, Wednesday, Buscemi was reportedly walking with a woman in front of 369 Third Ave. Unfortunately for the star, he fell prey to a violent attack and was punched in his face around 11:48 am. The 66-year-old actor was taken to Bellevue Hospital for medical care after suffering swelling in his left eye and face.

Buscemi’s publicist told the New York Post :

“Steve Buscemi was assaulted in Mid-Town Manhattan, another victim of a random act of violence in the city. He is OK and appreciates everyone’s well wishes, though incredibly sad for everyone that this has happened to while also walking the streets of New York.”

The attacker who punched Buscemi still looms at large, according to sources close to the police. As per the CCTV surveillance photo released by NYPD, a bearded man sporting a baseball hat, a blue t-shirt, and black sweatpants was responsible for the punch.

A worker who saw the assault told The Post:

“I saw he was with a woman, and then through the corner of the window I saw him trip and fall backwards. He right away got up and ran in the opposite direction. I didn’t see who hit him.”

She continued to express her worries, being scared about ending her work shift late at night, especially after Steve Buscemi was attacked.

This was the second random assault in recent times as Buscemi’s Boardwalk Empire co-star, Michael Stuhlbarg, was also hit on the neck in late March.

While walking alone in Central Park near E. 90th St. and East Drive, a man threw a rock at him. The actor chased after him, and in this case, the attacker was arrested by the police. He was revealed to be a 27-year-old named Xavier Israel.

Vansh is an SEO Contributing Writer for ComingSoon. His passion for cinema and the superhero genre is what turned him into a movie/series analyst. In his spare time, Vansh can be found screaming at his screen while watching cricket matches or binging all sorts of streaming content to brush up on his entertainment knowledge.

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‘The Last Stop in Yuma County’ Review: An Accomplished Pressure-Cooker Thriller That’s Like a Tarantino-Fueled Noir, 30 Years Later

In Francis Galluppi's lean, tight, and stylishly clever B-movie, two bank robbers take over an Arizona diner. Violence and greed ensue.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Thirty years ago (in fact, it will be 30 years to the day this Sunday), Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and cinema was never the same. Tarantino’s 1994 epic-crime-pretzel-meets-pop-monologue masterpiece smashed open one door after another, and an inevitable result is that we saw a great many movies in the ’90s that were Tarantino knockoffs — underworld capers of baroque violence and exuberant scuzz, movies that not only bent the dirty hedonism of film noir into new shapes but did it with a special brand of self-consciousness, a “Look at what we’re up to!” effrontery.

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The man in the car is handsome in a nervous-geek way, with a very straight haircut, and he’s toting a small rectangular case. He’s got an unmistakable Norman Bates vibe (something the film makes reference to). While twiddling with the radio, he hears about the bank robbery (the fact that the men drove off with $700,000 in a green Pinto), and he then flips the radio onto a song that, to me, was needle-drop heaven: the 1968 Paul Mauriat version of “Love Is Blue.” I confess that this instrumental French ditty of tinkling rapture is one of my all-time favorite pop songs, and the film uses it in heavily ironic counterpoint, laying it over shots of an orange truck turned on its side, post-crash, dripping gasoline. Love is blue, and in this movie so are blood, guts, bullets, and octane.

The Norman Bates-in-the-’70s fellow is played by Jim Cummings , the gifted indie actor and filmmaker who is, among other things, a wicked chameleon. Even those who relished his performance as a trainwreck of a small-town cop in “Thunder Road” (which he also directed) might not immediately recognize him here. His character, it turns out, is a knife salesman (which evidently was a thing back then, sort of like selling encyclopedias), and he’s on his way to visit his young daughter. The audience thinks: neo-Anthony Perkins + knife salesman + divorced dad = big loser. But Cummings invests the character, who is never named, with a spooky awareness. He’s a scaredy-cat soul who absorbs everything.

Mostly, he’s trying to survive. So is Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue), the pretty waitress — this is back in the age when everyone refers to her as a “pretty waitress,” as if it were a job description — who says goodbye to her doofus Southern-hippie local sheriff of a husband (Michael Abbott Jr.) and then starts serving coffee.

That’s when Beau (Richard Brake) and Travis (Nicholas Logan) walk in. They’re the bank robbers, and it doesn’t take long for them to figure out that Charlotte has already made them. (Even in the ’70s, a green Pinto stands out.) Galluppi has an exceptional eye for actors, and he scores a real coup by casting Richard Brake as the alpha crook. As Beau, Brake is tall and gaunt, with burning eyes, a rotter who looks like Steve Buscemi crossed with David Byrne crossed with a human rattlesnake who’s a lifelong junkie. Yet he speaks in a voice that’s bone-dry with logic. He’s the one who’s going to keep this situation on the down-low. As for Travis, his partner, he’s the hothead, like Steve Zahn on steroids, doomed to make it all explode.

Reviewed online, May 8, 2024. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 90 MIN.

• Production: A Well Go USA Entertainment release of a Local Boogeyman, XYZ Films production, in association with Carte Blanche, Random Lane. Producers: Matt O'Neill, Atif Malik, Francis Galluppi. Executive producer: James Claeys, Brian Dahlin, Kyle Stroud, Jim Cummings, Nicholas Logan, Joe Heath,
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Francis Galluppi. Camera: Mac Fisken. Editor: Francis Galluppi. Music: Matthew Compton.
• With: Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Richard Brake, Sierra McCormick, Nicholas Logan, Michael Abbott Jr., Connor Paolo, Alexandra Essoe, Robin Bartlett, Jon Proudstar, Sam Huntingotn, Ryan Masson, Barbara Crampton, Gene Jones, Faizon Love.

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Focus features acquires ‘last breath’ starring woody harrelson, finn cole and simu liu — cannes, nypd identifies suspect in random attack on steve buscemi – update.

By Bruce Haring

Bruce Haring

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UPDATE: The NYPD has identified a suspect in last week’s seemingly random attack on actor Steve Buscemi . Police say the man pictured in surveillance images is 50-year-old Clifton Williams.

Police have not located Williams and no arrests have been made. The search is ongoing.

Additional information on the suspect was not released.

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The broad-daylight attack is just one of the celebrity incidents that have happened over the last few years. Comic actor Rick Moranis, Michael Stuhlbarg (who was in the show Boardwalk Empire with Buscemi), and reality star Bethenny Frankel are among those similarly victimized.

Buscemi had a swollen left eye and face from his attack and was taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.

His assailant ran off and is still being sought.

“Steve Buscemi was assaulted in Mid-Town Manhattan, another victim of a random act of violence in the city,” Buscemi’s publicist said in a statement to The Post.

“He is ok and appreciates everyone’s well wishes, though incredibly sad for everyone that this has happened to while also walking the streets of New York.”

Cops said the random attack happened around 11:48 a.m. on Wednesday in front of 369 Third Ave.

Buscemi has had a celebrated career. He has appeared in the films Fargo and Reservoir Dogs, and in the TV series The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm , among many others.

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