I watched Reservoir Dogs and now everything is going wrong
If Tarantino can’t keep his promise to make ten films, how can I keep mine to watch 250?
I’m starting to wonder if Quentin Tarantino will ever actually make that tenth and final film.
The idea for this blog was to watch the highest-rated 250 films from you know where and use them as prompts for personal reflection. I’d try to watch and write about one movie every week and, to make things easier for myself, I’d tie the wordcount to the theme. 250 posts of around 250 words each.
Then I watched Reservoir Dogs and everything started going wrong.
Much like the film industry itself, I go through phases. Late in 2020, I had my heist movie phase. I watched anything recommended to me and read about those I liked best — films like Thief, Sexy Beast, and The Asphalt Jungle. Especially The Asphalt Jungle. That film felt like a blueprint — like a distillation of everything I was looking for when I first thought, “I should watch some heist movies.”
In an essay by Ron Wilson called The Left-Handed Form of Human Endeavor, while waist-deep in heist movie literature, I read:
The robbery itself, of course, ends in disaster, but director Huston makes it clear that it is the personal failings of these men that ultimately ensures their downfall.*
I love this idea. The very qualities that make these men able to commit a robbery are the same qualities that ensure their failure.
The phase dovetailed into a noir obsession shortly thereafter. But what I read calls out to me every time I watch a film in which things don’t go quite how they’re supposed to. In fact, as I sit down to write 250 words about Reservoir Dogs, it’s practically screaming at me.
My own personal theory about Reservoir Dogs, based on what Wilson says, is that the job and its failure are both made possible by the fact that none of these guys know each other. Their colourful pseudonyms afford them the anonymity they need to work together — while also being the reason why, when they discover one of them is a cop, even longstanding trust breaks down.
And this is Quentin Tarantino’s first film. Surely he’s trying to tell me something. All of a sudden I wondered if we’d ever get that tenth movie. I also wondered why I had ever thought to impose a word count on myself.
I use a random number generator to pull films from the list, but it certainly feels like a stroke of good luck that Reservoir Dogs came so early in the “That’s not a movie blog!” project. It’s a reminder that even the best plans — whether for a diamond heist, a filmography, or a blog about movies — may not go the way you think they will.
Now, at almost 500 words, I’m free and more focused on the ultimate goal — crossing off all 250 of these movies and writing about them (and myself) honestly and completely.
And I think that’s for the best. The original plan probably would’ve been my downfall anyway.
*You can find this essay in the book Film Genre 2000.
