Quentin Tarantino Month: "Reservoir Dogs"

Reservoir Dogs

5 out of 5 stars

Family Appropriateness rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Rated R
-A moderate amount of gun violence, some showing gun wounds as it happens.
-Quite a bit of blood is shown, but it is mostly on someone who had been shot previously. It is enough to form a small puddle by the end.
-Strong language, including f-words in both sexual and non-sexual contexts, throughout.






"Reservoir Dogs" knows it is a simple movie and stays focused on what is important.

Most of the film is set in a warehouse, where several members of a robbery gang are hiding out. One of them, Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), has a bullet wound in his belly. He is suffering a slow, painful death and needs medical attention as soon as possible. However, some of the other gang members do not know what to do. They are afraid that if they take Orange to a hospital, he will give them away when the police ask questions.

They have just returned from a robbery that did not go well at all. As they were stealing diamonds, someone sounded an alarm, one of the members -- Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) -- shot a few people, and the cops came. The gangsters are suspicious that someone in the group is a mole because the police came to the scene much more quickly than normal.

This film is the simplest of the Tarantino films, but it is definitely one of the best. The premise is not overly complicated, and it never attempts to be more than it needs. The only twist is the revelation of who the mole is. Not straying into complexity allows the movie to focus on the characters. In this aspect, Quentin Tarantino is at the top of his game in this film. There are four major characters, and each is memorable for different things.

Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) is established from the beginning as a jerk. Before the opening credits, there is a scene with all the gang members in a restaurant. Though this event has nothing to do with the rest of the film, it gives insight into who Mr. Pink is. When everyone is tipping the waitress, he refuses to do so because he thinks it is ridiculous that society expects him to pay more to someone who is just doing a service. In his opinion, it is unnecessary unless the person went above and beyond. He does not care that some people live off of tips. This scene indicates he is self-absorbed. He rarely does anything for other people, and he constantly justifies himself for being that way. This trait is consistent throughout the film.

Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) is the opposite. He is a calm, older man who wants to see the best in people. When Mr. Pink suspects that someone is a mole, White is infuriated. He does not think anyone in their company would snitch on them. None of the gang members go by their real names so they cannot testify against each other, and White is so trusting that he reveals his first name to another character at one point.

Mr. Blonde is a psychopath. This is both said by other characters and shown in a memorable, yet disturbing scene. While he commits atrocious acts, he has the radio set to up-beat dance music. He proceeds to make some comical motions, which shows how crazy he is.

Every single scene is entertaining. This is due to interesting characters, a focused plot and details that are not revealed all at once. Right after the opening credits, the first thing that is shown is Mr. Orange in the back seat of a car with blood everywhere. How or why this happened is not explained at first, but it is eventually. In the end, all of the questions that have been risen are answered.

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Quentin Tarantino Month

Introduction
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Inglorious Basterds
Jackie Brown

Quentin Tarantino Month: "Jackie Brown"

Jackie Brown

4.5 out of 5 stars

Family appropriateness rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars
Rated R
-Strong language, including f-words, throughout.
-Gun violence. The wounds are never seen on-screen, but blood splatters on a window in one scene.
-One sex scene. It is a brief depiction of anal sex between a heterosexual couple. It is shown from above the waste, and their clothes are on. However, afterwards, the girl walks away, and the top part of her buttocks are clearly shown.





"Jackie Brown" is difficult to understand at first, but it features the best female character Quentin Tarantino has written.

Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is a middle-aged, single woman working a dead-end job as a flight attendant. An illegal gun salesman named Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) uses her to smuggle money from Mexico to California. Coming off a flight, she is stopped by two cops, Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton) and Mark Dargus (Michael Bowen). They suspect she is somehow connected to Robbie, and upon searching her bag, they find the $50,000 she is smuggling as well as a small bag of cocaine she did not know about.

She gets put in jail, and Robbie pays her bail. He knows she will be offered a plea deal, which will lead to his eventual arrest. His intention in getting her out of jail is so he can kill her before she says anything incriminating. When he goes to her house, she is prepared with a gun, so he cannot go through with the murder.

Robbie is worried about being caught, and there is still $500,000 more that Brown is supposed to smuggle out of Mexico. He wants that money, but he realizes this will be hard to get because Brown is being watched by the police. Because of this, Brown comes up with a slightly convoluted plan to thwart the police and get Robbie his money. Little does he know, Brown is using him for her own purposes.

The plan Jackie Brown lays out is complicated. What she does is different than what she says she will do. In order to fully comprehend it, I needed to watch it a second time. I am glad I did because I have a greater admiration for Jackie Brown and a better appreciation of the movie.

Brown is the best female character Tarantino has ever written. To say she is a smart, independent woman is an understatement. Certain context clues suggest she has been taken advantage of a lot. Now, she knows when people are trying to use her, and she knows how to stand up for herself. She is at a low point in her life, making very little money, and the plan she has will give her a new, fresh start.

Though the story is complicated, especially at first viewing, it is still enjoyable to watch because each supporting character is entertaining. Ordell Robbie is a despicable man. He only looks out for his own interests, and he is willing to kill people to get what he wants.

Robert De Niro plays another despicable character named Louis Gara. He just got out of jail after having served four years for bank robbery, and he now works for Robbie. Even though they are both awful people, Robbie and Gara are completely different. Robbie is a loud, charismatic salesman. Gara is shy and goes along with whatever he is told to do.

De Niro does a great job at bringing his character to life. He has certain mannerisms that show how introverted Gara is. It is one of those performances that is so good, the actor is almost unrecognizable.

Jackie Brown has a love interest in Max Cherry (Robert Forster), a bail bondsman who is getting tired of his lifestyle. Robbie already has the money for bail, but because he does not want to attract any suspicion, he hires Cherry to get Brown out of jail. Cherry immediately finds her attractive, and he does what he can to help her. Both characters are at a point in their lives where they realize they are getting old, and they both have their share of regrets.

The love story is not the main focus, but it does drive the plot forward. Cherry plays a big role in Brown's plan. The fact that he likes her as more than friends is his motivation for helping her. There is some buildup with the love story that pays off in the end without being sappy.

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Quentin Tarantino Month:

Introduction
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Inglorious Basterds
Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Tarantino Month: "Inglourious Basterds"

Inglourious Basterds

4.5 out of 5 stars

Family appropriateness rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Rated R
-Bloody violence: depictions of scalping, blood from gun shots and a depiction of a knife carving into a character's forehead.
-One instance of sexual content: a brief, graphic depiction of anal sex with a heterosexual couple.
-Moderate amount of strong language including the f-word.







"Inglourious Basterds" is Quentin Tarantino's vision of how World War II should have ended. Frankly, it is much better than the history books.

Like "Pulp Fiction," it has multiple stories. However, there are only two, and they are told in a standard, linear chronology that comes together in the end. One of the stories is about Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), a young, Jewish woman who owns and runs a movie theatre with her boyfriend, Marcel (Jacky Ido).

The movie is set in Nazi-occupied France four years after Shosanna witnesses her family get murdered by the ruthless "Jew Hunter," Colonial Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). When this happens, she narrowly escapes and assumes the new identity of Emmanuelle Mimieux. Needless to say, she does not like the Germans. She finds an opportunity for revenge against some when the Nazi war-hero-turned-actor, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), pulls some strings to have the premier of his movie in her theatre. It is about his patriotic exploits and will therefore be attended by some high-ranking Germans. Shosanna and Marcel plan on using this as an opportunity to burn a large group of Nazis to death.

Unbeknownst to her, the Allies have a similar plan. They want to use the movie premier as a way to end the war with the aid of popular German actress, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) and "The Basterds," Lieutenant Aldo Raine's (Brad Pitt) group of Jewish-American soldiers.

The Basterds are known to the German soldiers as ruthless individuals. They go around killing Nazis and scalping them for proof. The Nazis who survive an encounter with them get a swastika etched into their foreheads with a large knife.

Despite the name of the movie, the Basterds are not the main focus. In fact, there is not one person who can be labelled as the central protagonist. Some may argue that Shosanna is, and that would be fair to say. She is the one person who is given a definite motivation for killing the Nazis. They killed her family, and the audience sees it happen in the intense opening scene. No other person has a backstory that is revealed to the audience.

Quentin Tarantino created a very funny character out of the Basterds' leader, Aldo Raine. Brad Pitt portrays him as a redneck with a southern drawl. He seems ignorant of anything that does not have to do with killing Germans, and he cannot even pronounce the word "Nazis" correctly. The one thing that disappoints me is that he and the Basterds are not in much of the movie. They are only shown together in a few scenes, which are for the purpose of driving the plot forward. It would have been nice for an extra scene to show more about who the Basterds are as people.

This would have been impossible to do because the running time is already two and a half hours, which is surprising because it does not seem that long. Quentin Tarantino knows how to keep an audience involved from beginning to end using smoothly-written dialogue in which the characters have interesting things to say and gives them personality.

The best example of this is found in the opening scene. It involves Col. Landa auditing a French home suspected of housing Jews. He gives a detailed speech about how he is so good at catching Jews because he knows how to think like them. He says this while comparing the hunt for the minority group to a hawk hunting a rat. Not only is this speech worded in such an interesting way, it gives insight into his character. It establishes him as both very confident in his abilities and as a devout anti-semite. This drives the intensity up because it shows that he can more-than-likely guess where the Jewish family is hidden.

In several interviews, Tarantino said Landa is the best character he has written and probably will ever write. He is certainly among the most interesting. He is a strong antagonist who will stop at nothing to get his way. His motivations are complex. At first, he appears idealistically driven because he agrees with the Nazis. However, near the end, it is revealed that his intentions are more self-serving.

Christoph Waltz does such a good job in this movie that he won an Oscar for it. Tarantino wanted so much to work with him again that he wrote a character with Waltz in mind for the movie "Django Unchained." Waltz's characters in both of these movies are polar opposites. In "Django," he is an idealist who believes slavery is wrong. In "Basterds," he is a man who takes pride in killing Jews and thinks black people are less competent. However, the way he talks is very similar. In both films, he has a juvenile charm. He knows how serious certain situations are, but he always attempts to make light of them so he can get what he needs.

A big chunk of the dialogue is subtitled because the characters speak different languages. This does not detract from the entertainment value at all. In fact, it adds a sense of authenticity to the movie. The dialogue is still well-written, but the average American audience member will have to read most of it rather than hear it.

All of the multilingual actors need to be commended for pulling off outstanding performances while speaking other languages. This is especially true of Diane Kruger as the actress Bridget von Hammersmark. She has a two different personalities she gracefully portrays in this film. One of them is the face she makes for the Germans who admire her. The other is who she really is: a spy for the Allies. With the Basterds, she is her real self, but with the Nazis, she is constantly smiling and laughing so she does not get discovered.

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Quentin Tarantino Month:

Introduction
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Jackie Brown
Reservoir Dogs