The accusation of plagiarism leveled at Quentin Tarantino completely overlooks the fact that what makes a film an original piece of work in a way that should be of interest to us as film scholars is its film specific characteristics. There are no original stories, only original ways of expressing them. _Reservoir Dogs'_ brilliance lies not in the story, but in how it is told. It mobilizes and subverts genre conventions from at least two distinct cinemas. There is a radical restriction of knowledge exercised for much of the film. The conventions of commercial narrative film demand a far more highlighted protagonist than we are given by _Reservoir Dogs_. This is really extraordinary formal experimentation. Finally, the film's unrelenting and unapologetic cruelty is quite distinct from the HK brand of tongue-in-cheek action or expansive male melodrama. Kelly Wolff <[log in to unmask]> Department of Communication Arts University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI 53706