Reservoir Dogs DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

How much do I love this movie? Well, let me give you just one little example. This past weekend, I finally managed to get a group of guys together to go as the Reservoir Dogs for Halloween. That's right. We even got a guy for Nice Guy Eddie. We even made it on CollegeHumor.com. Pretty sweet, eh? Anyway, that's how much I love this incredible movie.

While many people would surely scoff at the notion of this being one of the best movies of all time, I would have to say it's up there. Those scoffers would feel that way because it's so violent and uses gratuitious "cursing" throughout the flick. According to IMDB.com, the "F" word is used 252 times. But it also says on IMDB.com that this movie was voted as the best independent film of all time, and the most influential film in the past 15 years by Empire Magazine. So, while it may have had humble beginnings as just another festival flick, this debut flick from maverick director Quentin Tarantino has turned quite a few heads in its day, and with this super-cool new edition, it will keep turning heads for more years to come.

While this movie may have introduced us to the sheer brilliance of Quentin Tarantino, it also re-introduced an entire genre to the American public: film-noir. The genre was about as dead as Dillinger when this flick smashed onto the scene, and while it may not be as alive and kicking these days, it certainly is more so than it was back in 1992. While The Maltese Falcon is responsible for the birth of the film-noir, Reservoir Dogs certainly was responsible for its renaissance.

From the acting, the writing and most certainly the directing, this is just simply a marvel of a film. It's the kind of movie that gets better every time you watch it. The first, oh, 20 times or so that I had seen this movie, I'd notice something different, something cooler, every time. This isn't necessarily the case now, (I'm probably at 40 viewings now), it certainly does seem to get better every time. Tarantino takes such bold steps in his writing, with the non-linear style that didn't really even exist back then but is so prevalent now, and in his directing, holding these long sweeping shots in a style that, again, never really existed then but is heavily copped now. But probably the most impressive feat of all was that, with only a $1.5 million budget, he managed to assemble such an extraordinary cast for his means.

That budget itself was basically all due to Harvey Keitel, who came across the script and loved it so much he agreed to play Mr. White and also took a producing credit and got the budget upped. With that, he was able to cast the perfect team of crooks in Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink, Tim Roth as Mr. Orange, Eddie Bunker as Mr. Blue, Chris Penn as Nice Guy Eddie and Lawrence Tierney as the boss Joe Cabot. Even Tarantino, who plays Mr. Brown, and Eddie Bunker as Mr. Blue, both don't have many lines, but the lines they have surely count, with Bunker having some great one-liners in the opening sequence and Tarantino's "Like a Virgin" explanation becoming the stuff or legend. The rest of the cast gives performances so perfect and so different, yet still so attuned to the same chaotic harmony, that this is probably one of the best ensemble casts of all time as well. You have the disturbingly laid-back Mr. Blonde, the edgy-but-professional Mr. Pink, the super-cool Mr. Orange and the torn violent/caring nature of Mr. White along with the hothead Nice Guy Eddie and the grizzly boss of them all, Joe Cabot. It's just all too perfect, folks.

Reservoir Dogs is a movie that makes you pay attention to it. It's so brash and full of insane energy that you just can't help but take notice of it. If someone saw this movie for the first time with this new edition, they might think it's a rip-off of several other flicks. Of course, they won't know that this little flick is not the robber, but the robbee, and it truly does stand as one of the most influential films of all time. Long live the Dogs, and with the brilliance of the movie and this brand new wonderful edition, it's definitely safe to say that these Dogs will live on, hopefully, forever.

I found it a little weird that in this new edition, there don't seem to be as many special features as in the last edition, the 10th Anniversary Edition. But the first feature is pretty damn cool, and it's part of the movie itself. The Pulp Factoid Viewer is something you can turn on where, during the actual movie, these little red boxes appear on the screen, giving you these little facts about inspirations for the movie or other little quirks about the movie. It's a pretty clever way to get bits of information across to us.

The next feature is Playing it Fast and Loose which is a doc*mentary piece with several different film authorities commenting on the movie. This 15-minute piece gives us several different perspectives, including one from Harry Knowles of Aint It Cool News, Sharon Waxman, Hollywood correspondent for the New York Times, Peter Markham, Senior Lecturer for Directing at the American Film Institute and Mark Evan Schwartz of Loyola Marymount University's School of Film and Television. They all have some nice perspective on the film, and it's especially interesting from Markham, because, even though he's with the AFI, doesn't look or sound like the type of person that would dig Reservoir Dogs. We get some nice tidbits on the flick here from some unique film authorities.

The next one is a little strange, but pretty damn cool. In Profiling the Reservoir Dogs we get actual psychological profiles on the four of the Dogs, Mr. Brown, Mr. Pink, Mr. White and Mr. Blonde. We don't know who is giving the profiles, but they sound pretty damn accurate and rather interesting. They talk about their childhoods, education and how they got into a life of crime. You can also read the full profiles at the bottom, but while they give us a few new tidbits, most of it is the same as what we just heard.

The next one is good for about a minute of fun. The Tipping Guide shows us what the tipping habits would be for Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange, Mr. Blonde and Mr. White. It goes from $10 to $40, and they come up with some interesting tips. For Mr. Pink, they just think of different ways to say $0, and the rest are little oddities like "$3 and a Bear Claw" at $30 for Mr. Orange or "1/16 Carat Stolen Diamond" at $40 for Mr. White. It's kind of funny, but it's just a time/space killer.

Next up are some Deleted Scenes, 5 of them. The first one we get, "Background Check" is by far the best one, where we get a lot of nice info on Mr. White's character. "No Protection" stinks, but "Doing My Job" is pretty cool. It's with Nice Guy Eddie, Mr. White and Mr. Pink, all in the car heading back to the warehouse after getting the stones. We get a nice little aside here from a Pulp Fiction minor character as well, that you should recognize. After that, all we get is two different takes of the ear being cut off, both of which don't really work for me.

The next one is fairly worthless also, but a fun little time-waster. Reservoir Dolls is just the ear-cutting scene done with these big action figure-type dolls, with the actual scene playing in a little box in the corner. It's kinda funny, how they got the dolls to look so real, but still, it's only good for a minute or two.

K-Billy's Super Sounds of the 70s is kind of weird also. When you click on the logo, a little old radio comes up, and you can click along the dial for a few interviews. The first interview is with an actual criminal, supposedly, talking about the realism of the movie, as he thinks it's ridiculous. The next one is from one of the guys in Stealer's Wheel, who wrote the song Stuck in the Middle. The last one is a bunch of takes with Steven Wright and Quentin Tarantino doing the K-Billy thing, with Tarantino laughing pretty much the whole time after the take is through. I'm not really sure what those first few ones were all about, but the last one is pretty cool.

Reservoir Dogs Style Guide doesn't even give you a minute to waste here. It's a 21-second clip that has all the Dogs doing something "in style," like "Killing in Style," and etc. Yeah. I'm not sure why it's here at all. 21 seconds. Seriously.

Securing the Shot: Location Scouting with Billy A. Fox is a nice 5-minute piece about the few different locations used to shoot the flick, and how they came about getting each different spot. It may only be about 5 minutes long, but we get a lot of nice little tidbits crammed into those 5 minutes, so it's well worth the time.

Class of '92 is a very nice piece that talks about the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, where Reservoir Dogs premiered, and, basically, where the independent film movement really took off. We don't actually see a whole lot of Quentin here, with a lot of stuff from the other prominent people from that festival. After the first few 8 minutes or so, we get more individual accounts from the other filmmakers, like Alex Rockwell and Katt Shea, from that year and their individual experiences. The best part of this whole thing is at the very end, when we see Quentin describing his outlandish Sundance experiences with his 4 screenings of Reservoir Dogs. It's crazy stuff, kids. I'm almost not really sure why he showed those other filmmakers talking about their '92 experiences, because it doesn't seem like they're doing too much these days. Perhaps he showed all these people, some of which won awards over him that year, just to rub it in since he's a big-time director now. If that's so, it's pretty damn funny, but otherwise, it's a pretty nice feature here.

In Tributes and Dedications we get some interesting stuff. There are only two dedications, for Lawrence Tierney, who died in 2002, and Eddie Bunker who died in 2005. The Tierney dedication is something else, with many of the cast members telling their own quirky little stories about this crazy old man. This 15-minute tribute is pretty damn funny, with the best stories coming from Chris Penn, who sadly enough should have his own tribute after his sudden death in January of this year. But it seems everyone has a wonderful Lawrence Tierney story to tell, and they're all very entertaining.

The Eddie Bunker dedication is even crazier, actually. This 8-minute feature takes place in a car that Eddie's being driven around in, telling stories of his criminal days. According to his IMDB page, he was the youngest person, at that time, to ever go to San Quentin, where he stabbed a prison guard, and he was once on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. Yeah. He doesn't really tell of those tales so much, but we hear a lot from his criminal days including some details about a few heists he's pulled. He finishes it all off by telling us how he came to being a writer, and how he believes that perserverance overcomes all.

The tributes aren't really all that good though. There are tributes for Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Pam Grier and Roger Corman. Most of these are about 5-10 minutes long, and Pam Grier's is only about 3 minutes. They're all just talking about their own work, or how they met Quentin or any number of things as well. I'm not really sure why these are in here as well.

Lastly we get the Original Theatrical Trailer and an interview with some guy about the Reservoir Dogs Video Game, which looks rather interesting.

Whew. Now those are some features, baby!

The flick is presented in the widescreen format, in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

The sound can be handled in a few different ways. You can either choose the 6.1 DTS-ES Audio or the 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX for your listening pleasure.

While the movie certainly rocks, the packaging here almost rocks more than the movie does. This is, by far, the best DVD packaging ever created. Yes, I said it. EVER CREATED! First of all, they use a metal tin design for this. Now, metal tin DVD's are by no means new, but this one is. They have the metal tin, but also have a little topper for it, which makes the whole package look like a gas can. Frickin awesome, people. On the front of the tin there is a red background with this noir-ish shot of all the guys, a big title card and some of the names at the very bottom. On the back of the tin you get a big special features box and the full credits. But the coolest part is inside the tin.

To hold the two-DVD set they ingeniously employed another design: a matchbook. The orange matchbook is that of Uncle Bob's Pancake House, and you can see a big bloody thumbprint as well. Open up the matchbook and you have your discs, with Disc One having the matches printed on it and Disc Two saying to tip your waitress. It gets even better on the back of the matchbook where it says that this is the "Home of the Big Kahuna Burger" along with the full credits and tech specs. Also, at the very bottom it says Cabot and Son Industries, Los Angeles, CA, which draws some interesting comparisons to this and Pulp Fiction. Still, I stand by my earlier statement. This is the best DVD packaging design OF ALL TIME!!!

This is the closest I've ever come to giving a DVD a perfect 5 on everything. Incredible movie, some marvelous features and even the packaging is just phenomenal! I don't care if you have to steal a car to go pick this up, you should pick it up as soon as you can, because this is the real deal, folks. One of the best movies of all time in the best DVD packaging of all time. How can you beat that, eh?