Movie Summary - Reservoir Dogs essays

Movie Summary - Reservoir Dogs essays The movie Reservoir Dogs is the breakout hit of director Quentin Tarantino and was highly influenced by this week's in-class selection, Mean Streets. Reservoir Dogs was initially supposed to be made for $50,000 and shot in black and white until Tarantino's producer begged him for two months to raise money for the film and came up with $1.2 million. It grossed $2.812 million (leesmovieinfo.com) in the box office and had gone on to influence many other modern filmmakers in the last 12 years. Reservoir Dogs is not a film that a studio would have done because there is no protagonist. There is no "good guy" in the whole movie. Instead, we are shown a handful of characters with both good and bad traits, both relevant and irrelevant to the situation itself. The movie shows that loyalty is not always rewarded, and this is certainly not a value traditionally portrayed in Hollywood cinema. Reservoir Dogs has equilibrium, disruption, and more disruption, but absolutely no restoration whatsoever. While they are complex, the characters are easy to identify with because they all have distinctly human qualities and vulnerabilities... fear to hate, nothing is behind the curtain, it's all very out in the open. Each displays the emotion that the viewer has experienced throughout their life. The ending is resolved, but nothing was accomplished. The viewer leaves knowing that everyone is dead or captured, but there is a sense of wondering why, since there was no happy ending for anyone. One cannot help but wonder what the point of all the mayhem was. The editing was very well done, and one would never guess that the film was made with only a little over $1 million. The lighting was sufficient, the cameras didn't shake, and while there were no big special effects or stunts, the viewer is caught more in the story than explosions. The nonlinear timeline also added to the suspense of the movie. This movie has no traditional subculture at all. A woman sh...