Reservoir Dogs

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Screenwriters: Quentin Tarantino

Description

Is there honor among thieves? Yes and no, according to Quentin Tarantino’s inaugural feature. One character goes to prison to protect his boss but amuses himself by torturing people. Another character has compassion for a wounded comrade and causes his own downfall.

This gritty contemporary film noir chronicles a jewel robbery that goes disastrously wrong. The resulting bloodbath rattles its participants into suspecting that someone is a police plant.

Reservoir Dogs arrived unheralded at the 1992 Sundance FIlm Festival and showed what to expect from its brash filmmaker is the unexpected. Simultaneously, it established trademarks for the films that followed: glib gangsters with the gift of gab, ironically black humor, and plenty of violence. Harvey Keitel, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, and especially Tim Roth turn in razor-sharp performances, and Tarantino’s tight framing and invasive close-ups keep both characters and audience off balance.

Thanks to Miramax for providing a brand-new 35mm print for this special 25th anniversary screening. An extended Q&A with Tarantino and producer Lawrence Bender follows the screening.

— Barbra Bannon

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]