There’s so much to love about the movie Reservoir Dogs.
Reservoir Dogs is a movie about six random guys brought together to pull off a diamond store robbery. It’s one of Quentin Tarantino’s classics and also one of, if not the goriest movie Tarantino has also made. Just like Pulp Fiction, it’s set in early 90s Los Angeles and released just two years prior.
We start in a diner, where some of the soon to be robbers are debating the meaning behind “Like a Virgin”, the popular song by Madonna. All of the robbers are given pseudonyms, starting with Mr and ending with a color selected from their crime lord boss, Joe Cabot. We have Mr. White (Harvey Keital), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Blonde (Micheal Madsen), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), and Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino), and Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker) who barely even exists in the movie. Boss Joe’s son also is in on the job- Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn). After a heated argument between Mr Pink and the rest of the group over why or why not you should tip diner waitresses, the group leaves and we get the intro credits scene and the real stuff comes next. Because it’s Tarantino, our bloody crime thriller starts with the conflict and leaves the “how?” in the rear view mirror. We instantly have Mr. White driving a car while Mr Orange amateurly flips the absolute f*** out in the backseat over his gunshot wound in his belly. How this happened and why, we don’t learn until way later, which is how Tarantino likes to direct your attention in Reservoir Dogs. Mr. White and Orange make it to the rendez-vous, Mr White shows a very sensitive side, taking care of Orange and holding him in his arms like Mr. Orange was his own kid. Mr. Pink makes it to the rendez-vous and starts our narrative that there was a rat in the mix of the group who caused all those “blue boys” to show up out of nowhere. Mr. White and Pink converse over the theory and White vows they stay at the rendez-vous while Pink is worried the cops already know about it. Mr. White is more concerned about Mr. Orange, who he formed a bond with during the robbery. He even told Mr. Orange his name and where he was from, a golden no-no rule of the job. Mr. Orange requested White take him to a hospital and promised he wouldn’t say a word to the cops about anything, but White couldn’t be sure of it. Pink agrees and says he should be dropped off, but White breaks the news to Orange that he has information on White, so they keep Orange in the warehouse. The two break into a fight when the soon to be learned psycho Mr Blonde walks in, breaking up the scuffle. All three of the unharmed criminals dispute the conflict that happened in the robbery and then we get the background scenes. We learn how Mr White and Mr Blonde were put on the job and their relation to the boss, Joe. This is the start of how we unravel the threads of the story and how all the shit hit the fan. Tarantino guides you down this path feeding you a few clues every few minutes while you sit and analyze the story and try to answer the big question- Who’s the cop in the group?
WARNING: Subjective commentary in The Pros and The Cons below will contain spoilers. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The Pros
This is one of those movies that causes me to worry while writing The Pros because I know there’s a chance I may not deliver everything I liked because there’s so much.
Anyways if I didn’t make it apparent up there that I loved how this movie was framed, then I will be doing that here. Starting with the car scene and then having to follow the character’s recollections of what went down in the diamond store was a super unique viewing experience compared to starting with the actual robbery. Getting the background that White and Blonde were close to Joe, I immediately could eliminate Blonde as being the rat and knew it was super unlikely for White to be. Then once we could see how Mr Pink miraculously escaped the cops, we knew he couldn’t be a cop because he killed a few on his escape. But it wasn’t until way later, when we got Mr Orange’s background scenes, that we learned he was the rat. We also never see the actual robbery inside of the diamond store, which is crazy considering that it was of course the center of the job for the robbers. So to wrap things up, we’re slowly given more and more background on each character until the climax of the story, where everything makes sense to a viewer on how we got there. Even with the start of the movie not showing any of it, you get a rendition of it created inside of your head. That’s pretty freaking awesome.
The story. Truly one of the most reliable pillars of success is how good a movie’s story is. Tarantino is never one to lack in this category, and Reservoir Dogs keeps you on edge for what’s next the entire time. Where this story sucks in most of its attention is either the cop warehouse scene or the ending. I’ll start with the “cop warehouse” scene or whatever you want to call it. Some other names that might work are the “stuck in the middle with you scene” or the “ear cutting scene” or just “Mr Blonde being a f***ing evil psycho killer scene.” That last one probably fits the tone just a little bit better than “cop warehouse scene.” Micheal Madsen showcases the dedication of really the entire cast of Reservoir Dogs in this scene. The atrocity he commits is torturing a cop tied up in a chair and cutting his ear off while the radio station K-Billy plays “Stuck in the middle with you.” This scene just drips pure evil from Micheal Madsen and makes you squeamish when he finally cuts off the ear and holds it in his hands. The evil is stopped before Mr Blonde can burn the poor cop alive when Mr Orange saves the day, unloading his pistol on Blonde. Next is the ending, where we can see things get escalated because of Mr Orange’s actions. Nice Guy Eddie, along with Mr White, lets his emotional connection take over and turns against Mr Orange because of his friendship with the now dead Mr Blonde. Once our two sides are pinned against each other—Mr White and Mr Orange vs Eddie—Joe walks in and mediates conflict shortly by spilling the beans. He still doesn’t believe Joe that Orange is a cop. Realize that Mr White knew Joe before this job and Mr Orange, not at all prior to the job’s creation. Mr White stands up for Joe and we get a standoff. White has his gun pointed at Joe; Eddie’s pointed at White; and Joe’s pointed at the bloody half-dead Orange. Pink is trying to settle things but the three fire at each other, sending everyone to the ground now to join Orange, who’s been there almost the entire movie. Mr White is able to get to Mr Orange while the two bleed out and he finally tells White himself. White can barely swallow the pill and the cops break in as he points the gun at Orange and once again, we have an escalated situation ready for climax. He doesn’t put the gun down, even with Orange saying he’s sorry, and he pulls the trigger and instantly the cops shoot him dead as well. The character development is crazy, just in my opinion that White would not believe Joe and instead his newly met partner Mr Orange. Then when he’s turned upside down from protecting Mr Orange to killing him within less than a minute. He realized that he had killed his boss and friend Joe protecting the man that had screwed the entire job over.
I’ll make my last few pros a little shorter since I touched on part of it in the last two. The acting was superb. From Micheal Madsen and Tim Roth to always one of my favorites, Steve Buscemi, I loved everyone in Reservoir Dogs. You could write an entire essay about any main character’s complex relationship to the sequence of events in the story. I can’t even decide over Madsen, Roth, Buscemi, and Keital on who was the best. They all exceeded expectations and had their own special parts about each of them. Madsen was a psycho, Roth was natural, Buscemi was a rambling and entertaining talker, and Keital, who’s character felt the most human out of all of them.
My last favorite part is silly in comparison to the other intricate pros up above but I am a sucker for the scene where they all walk out of the diner looking badass in their all black suits and ties. The soundtrack was also killer throughout the whole film. Something that Tarantino seems to consistently nail.
The Cons
It’s really hard for me to dump on Reservoir Dogs because it does have such a special place in the movie loving section of my heart. And for that reason, I don’t have any cons other than how odd it was that Orange bled nearly the whole movie from his stomach and didn’t die by the end?
I really think this film stands alone and is easily up for debate for Tarantino’s greatest work. The Score is a 95.