A post-modern director

Since Reservoir Dogs’ release, Tarantino has often been criticized for stealing from other directors. His most common charge is he stole a lot from the 1987 Hong Kong film, City On Fire, when writing Reservoir Dogs. It’s an easy similarity to make, but is that really plagiarism? Tarantino is huge film fan. He’s watched countless indie, art house, underground and foreign films. Of course he’s going to be influenced by the films he’s watching, but is appropriation of influences actually intellectual theft? Tarantino is a post-modern director. He uses non-linear plots, old cinematic techniques, and builds characters from a cultural stand point, all these qualities are of a post-modern filmmaker.

He has a great ability to rehash a story that we have seen countless times before, dust it down and give it to you in an original, modern format and Reservoir Dogs is his best example of this method. The hallmark of Tarantino’s style is the irrelevant yet familiar saturations of pop culture. His characters don’t operate in the politically correct format that typical film characters do. They watch, listen, discuss and deconstruct the same music, TV shows and movies we watch and listen to. This creates a bridge between us and them. A bridge that lets us know, we are not that different from these soulless, loud mouthed, murderers. It’s a very effective technique, a technique that has often been copied since.