Reservoir Dogs: The birth of Tarantino's self-indulgency

After watching this I realized I don't really like Tarantino that much. He definitely peaked with Pulp Fiction, and that is a great film and by far his best. Reservoir Dogs (1992) is his first film, 2 years earlier than Pulp Fiction, and you can see him juggling with a few familiar themes: self-indulgent dialogues, with lots of swearing and pop-culture references that, more likely than not, lead nowhere and don't have a purpose to further the plot, other than some comic relief. There's also lots of bright-red cartoonish blood everywhere, Tarantino really likes his blood alright. And he likes a whole lot of violence, long scenes of torture that serve no purpose other than some morbid fascination of how many more pools of bright-red blood he can fit in a single shot. The problem with Reservoir Dogs is that, with the exception of a few dialogues that are quite funny, the plot is static and mediocre at best.

When it comes to blood, I assume he was inspired by old Samurai movies, where swords slashing human flesh would case the blood to squirt out like when you hold a high-pressure water hose and let it go for a moment. It may be a bit of a language barrier here for me, so not sure I'm explaining it right, but you get the idea.

I don't have a problem with violence and gore in films whatsoever, in fact a lot of my favorite films have lots of violence in them; I do, however, have an issue with violence that doesn't serve the plot or violence that is self-indulgent, pretending to be art. I can't say Tarantino is pretentious like some critics do, because I do not see much substance to what he's trying to convey. A pretentious artist at least tries to convey something he thinks is profound (even if he fails), and Tarantino, if anything, is instead quite nihilistic. There really is not much to him beside the visual gore, stream-of-consciousness type of dialogue (with obligatory swearing to make it cooler) and characters that make violent mistakes or go on revenge sprees.

Now, when it comes to Reservoir Dogs specifically, the biggest issue I have with it is how it was set up and what it failed to deliver. It was set up almost like a "whodunit" type of thriller, and what we got was long ramblings, pointless character introductions (with flashbacks and chapters dedicated to a few of them) that didn't reveal anything in the end and didn't satisfy my curiosity whatsoever. In other words, without spoiling the plot, character flashbacks were just a vehicle for Tarantino to have more pointless dialogues that would go on sometimes funny tangents; but that's about it.

This lack of structure, I suppose, was seen as fresh and original at the time, but I just find it tiresome. It seems though that he did learn to have more meat in his next movie - Pulp Fiction -, as it's much more memorable and has truly great scenes in it.

Can't fault Tarantino for trying to be original, I'd rather see directors attempt different things, but the thing is, what he's doing in Reservoir Dogs is not necessarily original, but it's really trying to be so, and that striving reveals itself in characters that are not subtle, that have no clear motives or emotions for us to care. Rather, Tarantino's characters are just caricatures that he fills with his pop-culture ramblings. and I cannot help but see the director speaking directly through them, forcing his way with his self-indulgency, instead of letting them have a life of their own.

It's a decent debut film, just way too overhyped.

Rating: 6/10