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Reservoir Dogs

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Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 film, Quentin Tarantino's debut as a feature film director. It introduced many of the themes and aesthetics that have become Tarantino's hallmarks — violent crime; pop culture references; memorable dialogue; and nonlinear stories.

It features Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, and Lawrence Tierney. Tarantino has a minor role, as does criminal-turned-author Eddie Bunker.

Tarantino (who had been working as a video store clerk in Los Angeles) was originally going to shoot it with his friends on a budget of $30,000 on 16mm with producer Lawrence Bender playing Nice Guy Eddie. However, actor Harvey Keitel became involved via the wife of Bender's acting class teacher, who had managed to get a copy of the script to him. He agreed not only to act in the film, but to co-produce. With Keitel's assistance, the filmmakers were able to raise $1.2 million to make the film, fairly large for an independently-financed film, but a small fraction of the typical Hollywood production.

The movie has since come to be seen as an important and highly-influential milestone of independent filmmaking. Film critic Jami Bernard of New York Daily News said of the film's premier at Sundance: "I don't think people were ready. They didn't know what to make of it. It's like the first silent movie when audiences saw the train coming toward the camera and scattered." [link]

A video game based on the film has been announced at E³ 2006 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Windows.

Contents

Plot synopsis

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A group of eight men eat breakfast at a Los Angeles diner. Joe (Lawrence Tierney) leafs through an old address book, aggravating the man sitting next to him. At the same time, the table is engrossed by a man’s opinions on Madonna’s song “Like A Virgin”. When the time comes to leave the waitress a tip, Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) details his anti-tipping policy, much to the others’ chagrin. One of the film’s most memorable scenes follows, with the eight men walking to their cars accompanied by the George Baker Selection’s “Little Green Bag”.

The film cuts to Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) lying in the backseat of a Chevy Nova, bleeding profusely from a wound to his stomach. Panic stricken, he seems on the verge of a mental breakdown. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) manages to navigate the car back to the rendezvous while still comforting the injured Orange.

Once the pair arrives at the rendezvous, an abandoned mortuary, Orange begs White to take him to a hospital, but White refuses. Mr. Pink soon joins them. It is revealed that Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino) was killed by the police after the team fled the scene of the crime. With Mr. Orange passed out on the floor, Pink and White move to another room to discuss their situation.

Mr. Pink makes his escape.
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Mr. Pink makes his escape.
It’s revealed that the men were contracted for a heist, but during the operation an alarm was activated causing Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) to begin executing hostages. A large group of police arrived almost immediately after Mr. Blonde began executing hostages, though they were possibly lying in wait the entire time. Mr. Pink reveals, through a “flashback”, that he fled from the cops through the streets, hijacking a car after wounding a police officer during a gunfight. Pink is seen carrying a case during the “flashback”, but the contents are unknown to the audience at this point.

Back in the mortuary, Pink and White discuss the possible fates of Mr. Blonde and Mr. Blue. It’s revealed that Mr. Pink’s case contained the diamonds the team was contracted to steal, though he stashed them before coming to the rendezvous. The pair speculates as to the identity of the traitor amongst them, leading to an argument where Pink accuses Orange of being the rat, inciting White to violence.

During a “flashback”, we see Mr. White meeting with Joe in his office, discussing his recent history as a thief and being contracted for the lucrative diamond heist.

At the rendezvous, White reveals his intention to take Orange to the hospital, although once Pink finds out that Orange knows White’s real name he flatly refuses. The two fight, pulling their pistols on one another. They are interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Blonde, calmly sipping a soda. White accuses Blonde of being a psychopathic killer, which Blonde calmly refutes, inciting White to further violence with his calm demeanor. The pair almost fights, but is interrupted by Mr. Pink.

The three head out to Mr. Blonde’s car, where it’s revealed that Blonde has captured a police officer (Kirk Baltz) and has been driving around with him in the trunk.

Another flashback begins, showing Mr. Blonde in Joe’s office, having just been released from prison. Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) soon enters, and the pair tussles like brothers. After discussing Blonde’s situation, Eddie and Joe decide to recruit him for the diamond heist.

In the present, the men bring the cop inside the mortuary and begin beating him. At the same time, Eddie is shown driving to the rendezvous while talking to one of his father’s subordinates on a cellular phone. Eddie arrives at the warehouse to find the cop bound to a chair and the three men interrogating him. Eddie’s incensed at their tactics, ordering Pink and White to take a car each and accompany him to dispose of the vehicles. Mr. Blonde remains to watch the police officer.

After the three men leave, Blonde reveals his intentions to the cop. He plans on torturing him, not for information, but simply because he enjoys it. Blonde turns on the radio to K-BILLY’s Super Sounds of the ‘70s weekend and removes a straight razor from his cowboy boot. In what is arguably the film’s most memorable scene, Blonde dances around the warehouse to Stealer’s Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” and slashes the cop with his razor, proceeding to cut off the man’s right ear.

Mr. Orange shoots Mr. Blonde.
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Mr. Orange shoots Mr. Blonde.
We follow Blonde out to his car, where he retrieves a can of gasoline. He douses the cop and prepares to ignite him, but the revived Mr. Orange shoots him in the chest, apparently killing him. We learn that the cop’s name is Marvin Nash and that Orange is in fact an undercover cop. His real name is Freddy Newandyke and he reveals that a police unit is waiting down the street for the arrival of Joe. In another “flashback”, we see Mr. Orange meeting his handler in a diner, detailing a meeting between himself, Joe Cabot, Eddie, and Mr. White. His handler suggests that Orange utilize “The Commode Story”, a humorous anecdote about a men’s restroom, to endear himself to Joe.

A montage ensues where Orange learns parts of the story, culminating in the actual meeting with Joe, intercut with a re-enactment of the situation in the bathroom. We next see Orange receiving a phone call in his apartment from Nice Guy Eddie, followed by scene in Eddie’s car where Orange, Pink, White, and Eddie discuss a bartender Eddie used to know and her relationship with her boyfriend.

The men arrive at the warehouse and are given their aliases by Joe. We next see White and Orange observing the diamond wholesaler from a vehicle, the two continuing to bond and reveal details of the heist to come. The film cuts to the escape after the heist, where Mr. Brown is driving a bullet-riddled car with White and Orange. They pull into an alley and are cornered by the police, although White quickly dispatches them only to find that Brown is dead. Orange and White flee to another street, where they commander the Chevy Nova seen at the beginning of the film. The female driver pulls a revolver from her glove box and shoots Orange in the stomach, although he retaliates by killing her.

Eddie, Joe, and Mr. White in a Mexican standoff as Mr. Orange lies dying on the floor.
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Eddie, Joe, and Mr. White in a Mexican standoff as Mr. Orange lies dying on the floor.
In the present, Eddie, White, and Pink arrive back at the warehouse to discover Blonde’s corpse. Orange tells Eddie what happened, causing Eddie to execute the cop. He refutes Orange’s version of events just as Joe arrives, confirming that Orange is the rat and that Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker) is “dead as Dillinger”. White refuses to believe him, however, and pulls his pistol on Joe as Joe draws on Orange. Eddie points his pistol at White, instigating a trademark Tarantino Mexican Standoff. After a shouting match, Joe shoots Orange, White shoots Joe, Eddie shoots White, and White manages to shoot Eddie as he is falling.

In the aftermath of the massacre, Pink comes out from hiding, grabs the case of diamonds, and flees the warehouse. White crawls over to Orange, where Orange finally reveals that he is indeed an undercover cop. White is tormented, putting his pistol to Orange’s head as the cops burst into the warehouse. The film ends as White shoots Orange and is gunned down by the police.

Influences

Tarantino is well-known for his encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, and Reservoir Dogs is liberally influenced by numerous films, particularly Hong Kong action cinema, French New Wave, the heist film and Samuel Fuller. These influences can be seen in everything from the suits the characters wear (inspired by the finale of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow II, itself possibly inspired by the Blues Brothers), to the color code names from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, to Tierney's line about John Dillinger (he played the famous Indiana bank robber in the 1945 film Dillinger) as well as Tarantino's later works, with his use of 'non-chronological' storytelling, in films such as Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction.

The screenplay, written by Tarantino, was partly inspired by Hong Kong director Ringo Lam's 1987 Long hu feng yun (City on Fire), starring Chow Yun-Fat and Danny Lee. Reportedly one of Tarantino's favorite films, he borrowed several key plot points and scenes, though the styles, dialogue and stories are quite different. In particular, the "Mexican standoff" at the end of the film is similar to one that takes place in City on Fire, and both stories are told from the point of view of an undercover cop with conflicting loyalties.

Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages."

Reservoir Dogs itself spawned many imitators in the 1990s, often low-budget independent films panned by critics and dismissed by audiences. Movies often cited as examples include Destiny Turns on the Radio (which featured Tarantino), Suicide Kings, Thursday, Two Days in the Valley, Killing Zoe (Tarantino was the executive producer), S.F.W., and Mad Dog Time.

Tarantino's scripts have also influenced the Indian cinema. For example, the Indian movie Kaante (2002) almost totally copied from Tarantino's Reservior Dogs, taking some of its ideas from The Usual Suspects (1995). Hence, Reservoir Dogs proves to be one of the best examples of a low-budget crime thriller.

Trivia

  • The film has 252 uses of the word "fuck".
  • For the European release the distributor used one sheet posters of each of the main characters. This marketing strategy has since become widespread.
  • According to Quentin Tarantino, Mr. Pink survives, but is arrested by the police — in the background, policemen can be heard ordering Pink to put his hands on the ground, then Pink says "I give up" after a brief firefight in which he is wounded but not killed.
  • The budget of the film was so low that many actors simply used their own clothes as their wardrobe; most notably Chris Penn's track jacket. The signature black suits were provided by Agnes B.
  • The plot of the movie was a huge influence in the music video for the band Rammstein's song Du hast.
  • The woman who shoots Mr. Orange in the stomach is played by Tim Roth's dialect coach.
  • Samuel L. Jackson auditioned for the role of Mr. Orange, but Quentin Tarantino felt Tim Roth gave a better audition. Tarantino would later write Pulp Fiction with the part of Jules written specifically for Jackson.
  • The woman that Mr. Orange shoots had a child. The infant's cries can be heard after Mr. Orange is shot, and there is a car seat visible near Orange's feet in the following scene.
  • The woman that Mr. Pink pulls out of the car that he hijacks is the same woman that Marsellus Wallace shoots in Pulp Fiction.
  • The comic Squee (by Jhonen vasquez, author ofJohnny the Homicidal Maniac) has a reference to the ear-cutting scene.  One of the twenty tortures that the so-called "Tickle Me Hellmo" (itself an obvious spoof off the Tickle Me Elmo) is that it "re-enacts that scene from Reservoir Dogs.  The Hellmo is depicted dancing and circling its victim, wearing a suit and holding a butcher knife with a boombox on the side and a child gagged and tied to a chair.
  • In the opening scene, Mr. Pink reveals that unless they deserve it, he doesn't tip waitresses.  In Pulp Fiction, Steve Buscemi makes a credited cameo as a waiter.
  • The cover of rock band AFI's album Answer That and Stay Fashionable is a parody of one of the Reservoir Dogs movie posters. A song from the same album, Kung-Fu Devil, contains a sample of dialog from the breakfast scene.
  • Koushun Takami has supposedly admitted that the lighthouse portion of his novel, Battle Royale was inspired by Reservoir Dogs. Ironically, Tarantino cites the correlating scene in the movie as one of his favorite movie scenes.
  • The original ending of Tarantino's True Romance script (before it was changed by director Tony Scott) had Clarence dying in the gun battle, leaving Alabama a widow. Tarantino said that he intended Alabama to turn to crime and join with Mr. White, a character from Reservoir Dogs. In a flashback scene in Reservoir Dogs, Mr. White is asked about "Alabama".
  • During a flashback, Joe and Nice Guy Eddie are talking with a recently paroled Mr. Blonde. He reveals his parole officer is Scagnetti, the same name of the detective who is chasing down Mickey and Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers.
  • Reservoir Dogs features characters wearing Wayfarer Ray Ban sunglasses (most famously in the opening credit sequence).
  • During a deleted scene Nice Guy Eddie states that he has prepared for a nurse to take care of the dying Mr. Orange.  He reveals that the nurse's name is Bonnie and that he is not happy with this whole Bonnie Situation.  This ties into Jimmy's wife from Pulp Fiction and is even used as the name for the chapter, "The Bonnie Situation".
  • Samples of the film's dialog can be found on albums by the bands Satchel, AFI, Fun Loving Criminals, and others.
  • In the orginal script, the Madonna diatribe Mr. Brown engages in is actually told by Mr. Pink.  To futher this, most of the conversation in the orginal draft is told by different people than those that actually spoke it in the movie.
  • The pop singer Pink claims that she was named after Mr. Pink when friends of hers noticed similarities in the way they acted.
  • An episode of The Simpsons, Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious features an episode of the cartoon-within-a-cartoon Itchy and Scratchy entitled Reservoir Cats. In this episode, a pastiche of Reservoir Dogs, Itchy is seen splashing oil over Scratchy and cutting his ear off with a penknife, while Stuck In The Middle With You plays in the background. A cartoon Quentin Tarantino then appears on film and says "What I'm trying to say is that violence is everywhere, man, it's like even in breakfast cereals....". At that point Itchy sharpens his knife and chops Tarantino's head off. Itchy and Scratchy high-five and dance around QT's freshly decapitated body, to the song Misirlou, which was in Pulp Fiction.
  • There is a long scene filmed, which was completely deleted, featuring the actor Nina Siemaszko as an intelligence agent.
  • The Star Wars fan film Stuck in a Room with Artoo contains scenes from a Star Wars adaptation of the film called Imperial Dogs. The name of the fan film itself is, obviously, a reference to the Stealer's Wheel song. The production company responsible for the spoof, Studio Creations, uses a logo similar to the A Band Apart logo, replacing the men in black suits with Stormtroopers.
  • In the flashback with Mr. Pink running from the cops after the diamond heist, he gets ran into by a lady driving a car. After he pulls her out through the window, he tries to open the door. While he's trying to open the door in this shot, you can see the suitcase laying near the front left tire of the car. When the police arrive at the corner of the building and start shooting, the shot goes back to Mr. Pink as he barely manages to get the door open. If you look closely, the suitcase is no longer there. Also, during the chase, Mr. Pink and the cops run past the same shops and cinema several times, in one case the cops run past one of the buildings before Mr. Pink does.
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    Cast
    

    

    The opening sequence

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The opening sequence
    

    

    


    

    Crew
    

    



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