Reservoir Dogs Computer Game Classified “Objectionable

7 July 2006

The Office of Film and Literature Classification has classified the computer game Reservoir Dogs “objectionable”.

The Classification Office made this decision because Reservoir Dogs tends to promote and support the infliction of extreme violence and extreme cruelty by encouraging the player to perform, and then by showcasing in slow motion, the most extreme forms of violence and brutality for the purpose of entertainment.

The player controls the six characters who appear in the 1992 movie of the same name. The player must kill large numbers of police officers. By taking members of the public and police officers hostage, the player is able to force the police to drop their weapons. The player can pistol whip hostages and repeatedly smash their heads onto nearby walls and surfaces. After the police comply, they can be disarmed, or killed in whichever manner the player chooses. The player can also choose to set the hostage free, execute the hostage with a single, point blank shot to the head, or kill the hostage using a "signature move." These signature moves include the ability to burn a hostage’s eyes out with a lit cigar, chop off a hostage’s fingers with a cigar cutter, and hack off a hostage's ear using a scalpel, all while the hostage pleads and screams in pain. Deaths can be replayed in slow motion to show, for example, bullets entering and leaving a person’s body with large sprays of blood as he dies, and decapitation by shotgun blast, leaving a headless body lying on the ground spurting blood. The player is able to repeat this violence and cruelty ad infinitum and without penalty for the purpose of entertainment.

A classification of “objectionable” means that the computer game Reservoir Dogs is banned. It is an offence for anyone to import, possess, copy, supply, advertise, exhibit or distribute the game in New Zealand.

ENDS

www.censorship.govt.nz

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