Reservoir Dogs

Reservoir Dogs is where Tarantino worked the method out and Pulp Fiction is where it became a form: chapters out of chronological order, long digressive dialogue about nothing placed immediately before violence, and the violence itself mostly off screen or abrupt rather than staged. Both also use a pop soundtrack as diegetic radio rather than as score, which was unusual in 1992 and standard by 1996 because of these two. Filed MEDIUM: one film-maker developing his own method, recorded for the same reason Perfect Blue to Paprika is.

Tarantino has repeatedly named Kubrick's racetrack heist as the model for Reservoir Dogs, and what he took is the structure rather than the plot: a robbery told out of chronological order, doubling back to follow each member of the crew through the same hours. The interesting part is where Reservoir Dogs goes further. The Killing SHOWS its robbery, in detail and more than once, from different vantage points; Tarantino keeps the heist off screen entirely and gives the audience only the planning and the aftermath in a warehouse. He took Kubrick's fractured chronology and used it to withhold the thing the structure was built to reveal.