Reservoir Dogs is a less polished precursor to Pulp Fiction. Personally, I am not a fan of sensationalistic and gratuitous violence just for the sake of being violent and therefore am not a huge admirer of Quentin Tarantino's. Pulp Fiction had some other things going for it in addition to the violence; Reservoir Dogs less so. It could have used a little less screaming Tim Roth as well. A lot of young people, and especially drug users, love Tarantino films because they are depraved psychopaths and they like to see stylized versions of their fantasy selves on the screen.
I don't think it's a masterpiece or a classic by any stretch and is quite overrated in some circles, but it's worth seeing because of the story behind its creation and it is good for an independent relatively low-budget production. However I wouldn't personally read too much into it. Reservoir Dogs is stylish, hyperbolic, gruesome and well acted with flashes of violent pop culture existentialism and chock full of Tarantino's patented machine gun dialogue. There is a certain appeal to Tarantino's style of dialogue, but it's got nothing on a good Robert Towne script.
It's hard to go wrong with Lawrence Tierney and Harvey Kietel.
