Reservoir Dogs

Entertainment Weekly Ty Burr

You may not like the terms Tarantino sets, but you have to admit he succeeds on them.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

A brutal movie, brutal in all the right ways -- brutally stark, brutally funny, brutally brutal. [30 Oct 1992]

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.

Washington Post Hal Hinson

If Quentin Tarantino's gritty, bone-chilling, powerfully violent new film, Reservoir Dogs, doesn't pin your ears back, nothing ever will...[It's] as caustic as battery acid. It's brutal, it's funny and you won't forget it. Guaranteed.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

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.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

With the exception of the opening scene -- whose purpose is chiefly comic -- the movie is one, extended climax. Even with flashbacks and other time jumps, it never lets up. You have to go back to Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1952 "The Wages of Fear" to recall suspense this relentless.

Empire Jeff Dawson

The hippest crime flick this side of "Goodfellas," Reservoir Dogs has all the hallmarks of a modern classic.

The New York Times Vincent Canby

Though small in physical scope, Reservoir Dogs is immensely complicated in its structure, which for the most part works with breathtaking effect. [23 Oct 1992]

Variety Staff (Not Credited)

An intense, bloody, in-your-face crime drama about a botched robbery and its aftermath, colorfully written in vulgar gangster vernacular and well played by a terrific cast.

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.

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]

USA Today Mike Clark

Too lingeringly creepy to ignore. [23 Oct 1992]

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.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

It's not the most violent picture ever; what film could aspire to that title? But it's so well made, the violence is so gratuitous, and the general reception has been so delighted, that attention must be paid. [23 Nov 1992]

Film.com John Hartl

All of it is vital and involving, and some of it is hilarious...I've rarely seen a group of people in a darkened theater react as viscerally as they do to Reservoir Dogs.

TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)

The film's look and themes also recall those of Howard Hawks. Avoiding artful, fussy compositions, Tarantino constructs much of Reservoir Dogs from simple medium-shot long takes.

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.

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]

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]

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

I must report that Reservoir Dogs has little of intelligence to say - except for a few implicit comments on the nature of loyalty and betrayal - and that it's violent to the ponit of sadism. [5 Oct 1992]

The New Yorker Terrence Rafferty

Less than the sum of its outrageous gags and inventive bits of business. The story is impressively bloody, but the blood is thin, and it keeps leaking out; Tarantino has all he can do to maintain the movie's pulse. Mostly, he tries to get by on film-school cleverness – a homemade pharmaceutical cocktail of allusions, pop music, and visual jolts. [19 Oct 1992]

Wall Street Journal Julie Salamon

The only thing Mr. Tarantino spells out is the violence. I have seen much more blood spilled, yet I felt sickened by the coldness of this picture's visual cruelty. [29 Oct 1992, p.A11(E)]