Reservoir Dogs

Film people are attracted to the heist thriller for a pretty obvious reason. The three-act form recruiting a colourful team of experts planning and executing an ingenious scheme to obtain vast sums of other people's money a bloody aftermath of betrayal and recrimination is just like making a Hollywood movie.

Quentin Tarantino's heist thriller Reservoir Dogs (Camden Plaza, etc, 18) is both a strikingly individual directorial debut and self-consciously within a tradition of existential crime films. Its chief debts, all fully repaid, are to Stanley Kubrick, Walter Hill, Joseph Losey and Raoul Walsh. The taut structure, using flashbacks as a form of ironic clarification, comes from Kubrick's The Killing (there is also a torture scene, mimed to recorded music, that deliberately echoes A Clockwork Orange). The pared-down approach to character and use of deserted, post-industrial buildings derives from Hill's The Driver. The decision to eliminate altogether the actual robbery follows the lead of Losey's The Criminal. The Walsh connection is through White Heat.

In a pre-credit sequence, six men dressed in black suits, black ties, black shoes and white shirts are having breakfast in a Los Angeles diner with an overweight old-timer and a plump young man in a shiny tracksuit. The camera circles their table as they exchange aggressive macho banter about the meaning of Madonna lyrics and the etiquette of tipping, in the manner of Paddy Chayefsky, Martin Scorsese and David Mamet. Leaving the diner, they move towards their cars in slow motion and, after identifying the eight actors, the credit titles describe them as 'Reservoir Dogs'. At this point we have no idea who they are or what the title means.

As soon as the credits end, Tarantino cuts to a fast-moving car with a badly wounded Tim Roth in the back seat and Harvey Keitel at the wheel. The identically dressed men are professional criminals: the informally clad ones are the big boss Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his son (Chris Penn). The robbery of a diamond wholesaler has gone disastrously wrong and Roth and Keitel are heading post-haste to a post-heist rendevous in a suburban warehouse. Two other gang members arrive unscathed (quizzical Steve Buscemi poised psycho Michael Madsen) two have been killed in a shoot-out with police. Someone has betrayed the operation to the cops. But no one knows anything of the others' pasts and Joe, the mastermind, has assigned colour-coded pseudonyms to the sextet to prevent mutual incrimination. They are thus forced to make judgments based on recent observation and conduct.

At this point we appreciate the meaning of the title. They're like dogs sniffing around each other. Tarantino's characters are a band of canine scavengers living by their own values on the outskirts of society. The police are the enemy ordinary citizens are non-combatants to be respected provided they don't act like Charles Bronson. Their screen idol is Lee Marvin. What destroys the balance of their enclosed ethical system is the concurrent intrusion of the loose cannons of altruism and psychopathy.

The ensemble acting of Reservoir Dogs is in the class of Glen-garry Glen Ross. Tarantino's dialogue crackles with obscene wit and gutter poetry, and he uses the widescreen to acute effect with deep focus compositions that create a dramatic space between people. Be warned, however, that this is a violent film.