The early nineties saw the influence of Hong Kong action cinema permeate mainstream Hollywood for the first time. Quentin Tarantino, a bold new voice emerged from the grindhouse cinemas and video stores of Los Angeles, shocked the scene by his debut feature, Reservoir Dogs. Itself a patchwork of different takes on the crime genre, the film’s plot of career crooks and undercover cops caught in a claustrophobic post-heist stand-off in an abandoned warehouse was borrowed liberally from Ronny Yu's award-winning City On Fire (1987). In Tarantino's world, however, blue collar criminals aspire to be Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson as passionately as they dream about one big score to see them into retirement. All-too-aware of the pervasive pop culture that surrounds them, Tarantino's characters debate the finer details of movies, music and TV shows when not inflicting bloody violence on one another in an environment of escalating paranoia and confusion. Disregarding linear storytelling to the point of omitting the heist itself entirely, Tarantino single-handedly changed the face of the American crime movie.