Face-Off: Reservoir Dogs vs. Pulp Fiction

This film is well known for pulling elements from a couple films, among them being Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and Ringo Lam’s City of Fire. A classic twist on the classic heist movie in which the actual heist is barely even a backdrop, and rather covers the preparation and the aftermath of the clusterf*ck of a heist. The surviving crew shows up at the designated meeting point and debate the existence of the obvious snitch within the crew. We get several scenarios and different stages of how these characters were dealing with each other, but Tarantino’s dialogue and way of building suspense makes it so that if the whole film took place in a warehouse I would not have minded in the least.

Tim Roth. Harvey Keitel. Steve Buscemi. Michael Madsen. Chris Penn. Lawrence Tierney. Eddie Bunker. And Tarantino himself.


We get a feel for all the characters and their distinctive personalities right from the oh so memorable opening scene. Mr. White’s blind devotion to Tim Roth’s Mr. Orange was touching, Buscemi’s unraveling paranoia made for one of his best performances to date, Mr. Blonde played the laid back psychopath to a T. And Chris Penn as nice guy Eddie was a favorite. These actors had such great chemistry together and they really sold the stress of the situation better than anyone could.

From the first scene we knew we were in for a treat when it came to dialogue in Reservoir Dogs. I mean these are guys I would sit and have a brew with. I mean we cover Madonna, and the pain in the ass side of tipping, where else do you get that? While Pulp Fiction is known for conversations you could have in every day life, I feel RD had a more realistic feel to it, with the way the characters dissected what went wrong with the heist, to Nice Guy Eddie telling an amusing story (a favorite scene of mine), to the final standoff (Chris Penn’s shining moment). If Pulp Fiction dialogue was realistic, Reservoir Dogs struck me as ultra-realistic.

Obviously the standout is the infamous ear scene, all it took was Michael Madsen sitting on top of that poor schmuck and move his arm up and down in a cutting motion to disgust audiences to the core. From there we had many shootouts, including an innocent woman driver popping Mr. Orange and getting a bullet in the chest for her troubles. Yeesh. When Wes Craven walks out of a screening due to being unsettled by the heightened realism of it all, I guess you did something right in this particular department. NOTE: I know you’ve seen a lot of ties in this Face Off, but Dogs needs another point in this category just for the audacity of the ear scene. That’s filmmaking with balls.

When I think of Reservoir Dogs, like many I assume, I see Michael Madsen dancing to “Stuck in the Middle With You” getting ready to slice up law enforcement. This movie will always be the film that introduced us to the crazy film sensibilities of Tarantino, his music, his dialogue, his choice in actors, his way of telling a story. The plot was incredibly restricted, its the genius of all involved that turned this into an entertaining ride any damn way. Roger Ebert stated that he liked the film, but wanted more…I feel the same way. But not because of any fault of the film, because of how involved I was with these characters and their situation. Tarantino isn’t exactly the king of suspense, but damn if this movie didn’t make him a serious contender.