Reservoir Dogs: Critic Reviews

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

A small, modestly budgeted crime movie of sometimes dazzling cinematic pyrotechnics and over-the- top dramatic energy.

It's brutal, it's funny and you won't forget it.

A nod to such noir crime classics as Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing," the movie's more than savvy sensationalism. Suspense, horror and humor are expertly interwoven.

The movie feels like it's going to be terrific, but Tarantino's script doesn't have much curiosity about these guys.

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 and shake us for every one of its 99 minutes.

Undeniably impressive pic grabs the viewer by the lapels and shakes hard, but it also is about nothing other than a bunch of macho guys and how big their guns are.

It's extremely well-acted, written with flair and directed by a 29-year-old first-timer, Quentin Tarantino, who always knows where to put the camera, when to cut to a flashback and how to draw the best work from his brilliant cast.

It's dynamite on a short fuse.

The writing is crisp and clean, providing line after line of snappy dialogue designed to leave the viewer alternately pondering and laughing aloud.

Those who survive it emerge in a shell-shocked euphoria -- so good and so blunt is the writing.

Raw and bloody. For adults.

An action movie comprised almost entirely of words.

In 1992 Quentin Tarantino did something that hadn't been done since 1986 with David Lynch's "Blue Velvet;" he reinvented cinema.

memorable

Tarantino was slated to direct the masterpiece that was True Romance but took on this project which might be the best directorial debut in years!

A highly cinematic blast for those who can stomach its brutality...Like Glengarry Glen Ross with guns.

Structurally, Tarantino may have borrowed from Kubrick's crimers and Hong Kong films, but for a debut, it's brilliantly written and acted and it captures the paranoia of white working-class men, threatened by gays, women and other groups.

A tour de force.

Quentin Tarantino came out of nowhere with perhaps the most astonishing, explosive American debut film since John Cassavetes' Shadows.

You don't have to love it to be impressed with its riveting treatment of criminals in action.

The one QT film that always manages to rope a knot in my stomach and keep a firm grip, pulling, twisting, tightening and re-tying it.