SOURCE: "Blood Lines," in New Republic, November 23, 1992, pp. 30-1.

In the following review, Kauffmann offers tempered praise for Reservoir Dogs.

How happy the human race must be these days. Photography and cinematography have done so much to further our age-old appetite for the sanguine. It's as if, after many centuries of waiting, those of us who do not actually hack or bludgeon now have the chance to see the hacked and bludgeoned. The latest Granta has a piece by Luc Sante—part of a new book called Evidence—that consists of police-file photographs of murder victims with his critical comments on them. In his aesthetic study of these pictures, "a style announced itself, deliberate and inimitable."

But never mind police files. Killing is in full flood around the globe—see tomorrow's newspaper—and we can all savor it in detail. Out of Vietnam, T.V. created the Living-Room...