Reservoir Dogs (1992)

I just saw Tarantino’s first film the other day. It was a lot of fun. Immersing almost from beginning to end. This is a heist movie where you don’t actually see the heist. So let’s talk about it.

Tarantino shows his great writing abilities in this movie. He starts by showing us the group’s relationship, witty, close, almost like a friendship. Then he cuts to where the movie really starts: Mr. Orange bleeding out while Mr. White drives him to the rendezvous. Now, I really like this about Tarantino. He throws us into a messy, confuse situation where we have no idea what’s going on. This forces us to (and makes us want to) give him our whole attention. Then, he gradually releases bits and bits of information to us until the end of the film.

The key in this movie, what it is about, is the question ‘who set the group up?’. In retrospect, the guilty one always had to be one of the first three we meet in the beginning: either Orange, White or Pink. This makes the revelation more emotional and powerful, because it’s a character we’ve know the whole movie. But we don’t know that yet.

On our way to the revelation, conflicts between the group arise. The conflict in the story flows very naturally. We can all understand the feeling of not knowing what’s going on or who we can trust. The climax is great: a four-way Mexican standoff that builds up until the moment where the four characters pull the trigger. We can feel the pain when White sacrifices himself defending Mr. Orange, only to find out he was, in fact, a cop all this time. So then, he shoots him and they all die, save for Mr. Pink, the most professional of them all. The coldest, most insensitive one. The perfect man for the job.

The movie intertwines the post-heist with backstory scenes, explaining us how it all started, a little background for the characters. Now, I’m no one to criticize Tarantino. He’s one of the most successful writers and directors in history. However, there’s one thing I didn’t like about this movie. Eight minutes, to be more precise. Mr. Blonde’s backstory felt, for me, dull. The point of it is making us aware that Mr. Blonde has a close relationship with Joe and Nice Guy Eddie, that he just got released from prison and that he can be trusted. But the film takes full eight minutes of pure exposition and no conflict at all, to give us that small piece of information. And, even worse, does this in the middle of a very exciting moment, when, in the post-heist, we had seen that the criminals had a hostage cop to question him. So, for me, this particular scene is added in an unfavorable moment, and is bad for five reasons: slows down the pace, cuts the action of the post-heist, lacks conflict, is pure exposition and is way too long.

Overall, watching the film was a great experience. Save for the eight minutes mentioned before, there’s non-stop action, rising conflict and a compelling set of characters and situation that you just can’t stop watching.

Thanks for reading,
The Screenplayer.

Love Actually (2003)

My favorite movie of all time is About Time (2013). If you haven’t, you should watch it. And if you have, you should rewatch it. Seriously. It will change your life. Anyway, that film was written and directed by Richard Curtis, the same man behind Love Actually, so my hopes were high on this one.

The film is an ensemble. I love this kind of movies, because a character that would be a support character in another film, gets his own main plot in these films. I also like them because they show how the world is a small place, and how everyone, one way or another, is related with each other. I think those are the two basic elements an ensemble has to fulfill. Love Actually does. It has a ton lot of plots. And here’s where I think it fails. Writing an ensemble film is no easy task. You have to give each character roughly the same importance, each of the plots must be equally strong, and you have limited screentime to do it. Having so many characters, forced Curtis to cut short some of the plots, omit important beats or end them too early/fast, which makes it feel incompletely. For example, the plot about the Portuguese lady and Colin Firth (Kingsman: The Secret Service), feels forced. The characters can’t understand each other and, even then, they fall in love. Other example, the ginger guy who travels to America to meet girls. He succeeds with no trouble whatsoever, which makes this plot feel like a waste of time, since it adds nothing to the plot or characters. A special case is the plot of Sarah. She sacrifices love for her brother. This plot ends on a low note, which is not bad. However, it ends way too early in the film (At 1h 36m of runtime, where there are still 38 minutes to go). And this brings me to a subpoint of the last statement: The script ends some of the plots in a harsh, hurried way. Alan Rickman’s subplot, where he kind of cheats on his wife, ends with a simple, bland recognition that he’s been stupid and a reunion at the airport. I also had a lot of trouble processing the end of the film, the scene in the airport, where I couldn’t understand how some characters know each other. This might be only me, but I felt it wasn’t showed properly and screenwriter Richard Curtis just wanted to save that explosion of reveals ’til the end.

Of course, the movie is by no means bad. The good things exceed the bad ones. The comedy is good, specially in the porn/relationship plot with Martin Freeman. The conflict is good, specially when revelations are added to it. For example, when Colin Firth finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him with his brother, the scene doesn’t upfront tells us that’s his brother. Instead, it gradually shows us that there might be some cheating going on, and then it presents us with subtext that implies they’re brothers. Other example is when the guy in love with his best friend’s wife tries to hide this fact. We know he’s hiding a secret on his video recordings, but when Keira Knightly’s character finds out, it is a compelling and tense moment. The plots of Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson’s characters are both emotionally satisfying. Also, Rowan Atkinson’s couple cameos steal the scenes. He’s brilliant as ever.

Overall, the film fulfills the basic expectations one would have of an ensemble. It’s a good film that entertains and has some powerful plots (The Liam Neeson/his stepson one was the most satisfactory for me). However, I think it needed more time or fewer plots to be able to go the extra mile. It just feels too crowded and that affects most of the plots’ quality. I think a film that better expresses this feeling is Crazy Stupid Love.

As always, thanks for reading.
The Screenplayer.

Steve Jobs (2015)

I don’t think there is a screenwriter out there today that masters dialogue as much as Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The Social Network). His style is very easy to identify and he just knows how to do it right. This film relies almost exclusively on its characters. It shows us three major events in Steve Jobs’ successful career. But that’s not really what this story is about. Instead, it deals with Jobs’ relationships with people around him: Steve Wozniak, his assistant Joanna Hoffman, Apple’s CEO John Scully, his ex-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan, and specially his daughter, Lisa, who he refuses to recognize at first, and around whom Jobs’ character arc is based.

It’s very impressive to see how most of the movie deals with characters talking, what most screenwriters would consider a sin, and yet it never gets boring. One of the keys for this is how Steve’s character has a very conflictive nature. Conflict is inherent in him and every interaction he has with other person. The dialogue is extremely good, because it carries emotional and conflictive weight, and not dull exposition or flat words that explain how a character feels. Because, even though the film has a lot of dialogue, the conflict and the emotions are always shown, and not addressed directly.

This is a great example of how to write a character-driven story successfully. I don’t usually enjoy a movie that deals with a lot of talking heads, but Sorkin demonstrates that, when done exceptionally well, there’s nothing one can do else than sit back, eat popcorn, enjoy and learn.

Thanks for reading,
The Screenplayer.