Soderbergh’s film may lack the visual bigness of McQueen’s, but it is not without its precision, a precision that does not come at the expense of the sheer messiness of the film’s characters and their situation. Steve McQueen’s Widows and Steven Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move are perhaps the closest that this formula has skewed toward prestige genre fare. And, in execution, it is not particularly sleek or intelligent. A plot solely focused on a dozen or so assassin’s targeting a blinding, syphilitic Jeremy Piven may not sound quality on paper. Which isn’t to say this formula is full-proof on me. Nothing in this equation sounds bad to me. Cynicism reigns as supreme as in the bleakest of film noir, yet the generic elements of the film hew closer to baseline exploitation cinema. Death is treated as superfluous, a mere hazard of the profession. Stakes matter, because the script is not beholden to the safety of the principal cast of characters. These films have a sizable ensemble cast, flashy dialogue, a winding narrative chock full of backstabbing and secrets, and the outcome generally goes badly for every character involved. Reservoir Dogs belongs to a specific type of modern crime film. And, while it makes me feel like a dorm-room film nerd to admit it, I still love Reservoir Dogs (I can at least say I never had a Pulp Fiction poster hung up in my dorm room). It was probably my favorite movie for years, until some other hyper-masculine auteur thing took its spot. Somewhere in my preteen years, when I was taking in film so voraciously that I may have grown allergic to the sun, I stumbled upon Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
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