8 Problems With Reservoir Dogs Nobody Wants To Admit

8. It's Pretty Much A City On Fire Rip-Off

"An undercover cop infiltrates a gang of thieves who plan to rob a jewellery store." That's the plot synopsis taken from the IMDb for Reservoir Dogs. Oh, wait, no, it's not. It's actually the synopsis for another movie named City on Fire, made in Hong Kong and released in 1987 - one that Tarantino is admittedly a big fan of. Reservoir Dogs could also use that synopsis on its own IMDb page and it'd make perfect sense, of course. Okay, so Tarantino's "thing" stems from the way in which he takes bits and pieces from other movies and brings them together to create something new and original. And in doing that, he's kind of unrivalled. Reservoir Dogs, however, is the one movie in his filmography that skims a little too close to that of outright plagiarism, because the "plot" isn't the only thing that Reservoir Dogs shares with City on Fire. Whole scenes and segments of Ringo Lam's movie are "stolen" - not to mention that a lot of the shots from City on Fire seem to have been transposed into Reservoir Dogs. Call it "homage," sure, but how many homages can you make to one move without it being an outright rip-off? The biggest difference is that in Tarantino's film, we never see the robbery, but Reservoir Dogs still shares a large portion of its DNA with City on Fire. Thing is, because Reservoir Dogs is ultimately a better film than City on Fire, it gets a pass as far as movie fans are concerned. Still, it's important to remember just how much of Lam's movie Tarantino took and put into his own.