proudly wore his influences on his sleeve. Tarantino is as much of a student of the screen as he is a creator of movies for it, marrying the cinematic language of the violence in exploitation and martial arts films with the character-driven writing of high-art, American auteurism. All of the trademarks of Tarantino’s filmography were on display in his debut feature, like eclectic soundtracks, non-linear storytelling, and buckets of blood. Even before the film was released, Hollywood legends like Don Coscarelli were baffled by the brilliance on display from a first-time filmmaker.
Tarantino had made a crime thriller, but instead of it being about a group brought together to carry out the crime in the climax, it focused on the aftermath when six individuals operating under pseudonyms — Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker), and Mr. Brown (Tarantino himself) — try to figure out who set them up after the police ambush their robbery.
As the audience, we learn so much about these six men by watching how they react to this paranoid, intense situation, and it’s clear almost immediately that Mr. Blonde is dangerously unhinged. So by the time he has a police officer tied up and begins to torture him for the fun of it, we’re already on high alert. We know that he’s capable of just about anything, but the fear lies not in graphic imagery, but the bemused acceptance that Mr. Blonde is going to cut off a man’s ear without ever elevating his heart rate, all set to the tune of Stealers Wheel’s 1972 song “Stuck in the Middle with You.”
