Five Favorite Things... Tarantino #1

 

The women’s revenge – Reservoir Dogs

“Let me tell you what ‘Like a Virgin’ is about. It’s all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick,” Tarantino’s character says before the movie fades-in from black to reveal a group of men sitting around a table in a diner. He continues with his analysis of the meaning of Madonna’s lyrics. It’s an interpretation only a dick could imagine.

The opening scene continues with a discussion over whether waitresses deserve to be tipped. This misogyny continues throughout the movie, relentlessly. The one woman on-screen is thrown from her car. A young black woman is described as being one of the victims of the botched hold-up. This is before Tarantino wrote memorable roles for Uma Thurman, Mélanie Laurent, and Margot Robbie. It’s a movie about men doing men stuff and it ain’t pretty men stuff either.

The movie plays-out in one location, in real time, the amount of time it takes a man to bleed to death, punctuated by flashbacks filling us in on what the heck is going on. The movie brings new meaning to starting a story in the middle. Almost everything has already happened when this one gets rolling and we spend the entire movie catching up with it.

It’s a love story between Mr. Orange (the crooks’ identities are concealed by colorful names), who is bleeding to death, and Mr. White, who feels responsible. The first words out of Mr. Orange’s mouth to Mr. White once they collapse into the movie’s warehouse/loading dock location are:

“Hold me, Larry.”

Larry’s unhesitating compliance – and that he’s broken the rules and revealed his name to Mr. Orange – is our clue caring has developed between these two men the other men of the story are incapable of possessing – or understanding. Mr. White/Larry is rare in this universe for having compassion and, shall I say, a bit of the feminine. His capacity for these feelings is put to the test to the end.

If you paid attention earlier, I didn’t have my facts straight. There is one other woman on-screen. She’s the reason the movie exists and why Misters Orange and White undergo this ordeal. While fleeing from the crime scene, Mr. Orange opens her car door, intending to pull her from her vehicle and replace her in the driver’s seat. Instead, she shoots him in the gut. She wasn’t about to be thrown from her car.

She makes these men pay for who they are, what they’ve said, what they’ve laughed about, and what they’ve done. She avenges waitresses everywhere – and Madonna.