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Reservoir Dogs
File:Reservoir dogs ver1.jpgReservoir Dogs theatrical poster
Directed by	Quentin Tarantino
Written by	Quentin Tarantino
Produced by	Lawrence Bender
Starring	Harvey Keitel Tim Roth Steve Buscemi Chris Penn Michael Madsen Lawrence Tierney Eddie Bunker
Cinematography	Andrzej Sekula
Edited by	Sally Menke
Distributed by	Miramax Films Rank Film Distributors Artisan Entertainment (DVD) Momentum Pictures (UK)
Release dates	October 23, 1992
Running time	99 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$1.2 million

Reservoir Dogs is the 1992 debut feature film of director Quentin Tarantino. It incorporates many of the themes and aesthetics that have become Tarantino's hallmarks: violent crime, pop culture references, memorable dialogue and nonlinear stories. It stars 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. The film portrays what happens before and after a botched jewel heist, but not the heist itself.

Plot

The movie opens with six men dressed in dark suits (Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), Mr. Brown (Quentin Tarantino), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) and Mr. White (Harvey Keitel)) eating breakfast at a diner, accompanied by Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney) and his son, "Nice Guy" Eddie (Chris Penn). Mr. Brown discusses his comparative analysis of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and "True Blue" while the rest listen and Mr. Pink expresses his anti-tipping policy. Then they leave the diner accompanied by "Little Green Bag" by George Baker Selection.

The scene jumps to a car, where Mr. Orange has been injured by a gunshot to the lower abdomen. Mr. White is attempting to comfort the hysterical Mr. Orange while trying to navigate the car. They are the first to arrive at the rendezvous spot (in a warehouse). Mr. Orange lies on the floor bleeding profusely when Mr. Pink appears and suggests that the heist was a set up. Mr. Brown has been killed by the cops, and Mr. Blue and Mr. Blonde are missing.

Mr. White and Mr. Pink are angry that Mr. Blonde shot and killed several of the civilians after the alarm was set off. They argue over whether or not to take the unconscious Mr. Orange to a hospital. The argument turns violent, and they point loaded pistols at each other. Mr. Blonde steps in and speaks up, and tells them not to leave the warehouse because they are waiting for Nice Guy Eddie. Mr. Blonde takes them outside to his car and opens the trunk to reveal a captured police officer called Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz).

Meanwhile, Eddie is driving towards the warehouse, while Mr. Pink and Mr. White beat the officer excessively and Mr. Blonde ties him to a chair. Eddie arrives at the warehouse, and orders Mr. Pink and Mr. White to come with him to retrieve the stolen diamonds from the hiding spot, while ordering Mr. Blonde to stay with the dying Mr. Orange and the tied-up cop. The officer denies knowing anything about the setup, and begs to be released. Mr. Blonde then draws a straight razor and tunes a radio to K-Billy's "Super Sounds of the '70s", which is playing "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel. Dancing around to the music, Mr. Blonde slashes the officer's face and cuts off his ear. Mr. Blonde splashes him with gasoline (brought from the trunk of his car) and prepares to ignite the gasoline with his cigarette lighter when Mr. Orange shoots him several times in the chest.

Mr. Orange tells the officer that he is actually an undercover police detective named Freddy Newandyke. He reassures Marvin that a large police force is waiting a few blocks down the road for his signal to advance, but refuses to call anyone until Joe arrives. Mr. Orange's flashback reveals how he went undercover to catch Joe Cabot. Joe hands out the thieves' aliases (to Mr. Pink's disappointment) and plans the heist. The flashback then goes to Mr. White and Mr. Orange right after the robbery and shows Mr. Brown's death (by a bullet to the head),Mr. White and Mr. Orange hijack a car but the female driver shoots Orange in the gut, we then see a part of the car scene from the beginning before the view jumps back to the present time at the warehouse.

Everyone returns to the warehouse to find a dead Mr. Blonde. Mr. Orange tells them that Mr. Blonde was going to kill the officer, Mr. Orange and the rest of the gang when they returned, so that he could take the diamonds for himself. Eddie doesn't believe the story and, furious with Mr. Orange, shoots Marvin and kills him. Joe walks in and tells everyone that Mr. Blue was killed, and accuses Mr. Orange of being an informant, which makes Mr. White adamantly defend Mr. Orange. Joe points a gun at Mr. Orange as Mr. White points his gun at Joe. Eddie then points his gun at Mr. White as the three of them pose a Mexican standoff. All the guns go off almost simultaneously, Joe and Eddie are killed, and Mr. White and Mr. Orange are badly hurt. Mr. Pink, who stayed out of the fray, leaves with the diamonds. After he does, the sounds of yelling and gunshots are heard outside of the warehouse, suggesting that Mr. Pink may be being killed or subdued by the police officers who have just arrived, although his fate is uncertain. Mr. White cradles Mr. Orange who reveals that he is a cop, Mr. White is devastated and puts his gun to Mr. Orange’s head just as the police enter and urge Mr. White to put down his gun, Mr. White shoots Mr. Orange and subsequently gets shot by the police.

Cast

• Harvey Keitel as Mr. White / Larry Dimmick
• Tim Roth as Mr. Orange / Freddy Newandyke
• Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde / Vic Vega
• Chris Penn as "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot
• Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink
• Quentin Tarantino as Mr. Brown
• Lawrence Tierney as Joe Cabot
• Edward Bunker as Mr. Blue
• Randy Brooks as Holdaway
• Kirk Baltz as Marvin Nash
• Steven Wright as K-Billy DJ

Production

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 16 mm 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. Harvey Keitel then was cast as Mr. White, alias Lawrence "Larry" Dimick. With Keitel's assistance, the filmmakers were able to raise $1.2 million to make the film, a fairly large sum of money for an independently-financed film.

The movie has since come to be seen as an important and highly-influential milestone of independent film-making. Film critic Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News said of the film's premiere 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.

The screenplay, written by Tarantino, was partly inspired by Hong Kong director Ringo Lam's 1987 City on Fire. 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.

For the famous "Mexican standoff" at the end of the film, they only had enough time to film the scene once. The scene was supposed to go: Joe shoots Mr. Orange, Mr. White shoots Joe, Eddie shoots Mr. White, and Mr. White shoots Eddie. During this sequence though, Eddie's squib didn't go off and he starts falling back before Mr. White shoots the second shot; which wasn't even aimed correctly (his shot is aimed between Joe and Eddie). Tarantino later immortalized this "mistake" with t-shirts that ask: "Who shot Nice Guy Eddie?".

Influences

Reservoir Dogs itself inspired many similar films in the 1990s, often low-budget independent films. Movies often cited as examples include Destiny Turns on the Radio (which featured Tarantino), Suicide Kings, Thursday, 2 Days in the Valley, Killing Zoe (Tarantino was the executive producer), S.F.W. and Mad Dog Time. Reservoir Dogs is influenced by numerous films, particularly Hong Kong action cinema, French New Wave, the heist film and Samuel Fuller. It also draws influence from Stanley Kubrick's crime film The Killing, as well as A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. These influences can be seen in the suits the characters wear (inspired by the finale of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow 2, itself possibly inspired by The Blues Brothers), the color code names from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Tierney's line about John Dillinger (he played the famous Indiana bank robber in the 1945 film Dillinger), and the juxtaposition of violence and popular music (as in Full Metal Jacket).

Tarantino's scripts have also influenced the Indian cinema. For example, the Indian movie Kaante (2002) had an extremely similar plot to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs while also getting some of its ideas from Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995).

Reception

Reservoir Dogs opened in 19 theaters with a first week total of $147,839 domestically. The film was never released to more than 61 theaters and totaled $2,832,029 at the box office domestically. The vast majority of people who saw the film saw it on videotape, especially after the popularity of Pulp Fiction. However, in Britain, the film was a success and gained recognition from its fans, hence the big push to put it into the Sundance Film Festival. Empire Magazine named it the 'Greatest Independent Film ever made'.

DVDs

Both DVDs contain four audio commentary tracks as well: one with Quentin Tarantino, Lawrence Bender, and selected cast and crew; and three by critics Amy Taubin (Film Comment), Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) and Emanuel Levy (author). The only difference is that the 10th anniversary edition has the cast and crew commentary on the widescreen disc, and the critics' commentaries are relegated to the full screen disc. (Tarantino avoids recording commentaries for films he directs, and Reservoir Dogs is no exception. His commentary is culled from an interview; it was not recorded specifically as a commentary track for the DVD. Tarantino has recorded commentaries only for films that he wrote but did not direct (True Romance and From Dusk Till Dawn). The Criterion Collection asked Tarantino to record a commentary for their laser disc release of Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino refused. He did introduce the supplemental material, however.)

The 10th Anniversary edition is missing a line of dialogue as Mr. White checks on Mr. Orange. When Mr. Pink asks about him, Mr. White says "I think he just passed out". This line is present in the original non-anamorphic release and restored in the 15th Anniversary edition, marking the first time that the film has been released on DVD with both an intact soundtrack and an anamorphic transfer. The 15th Anniversary transfer also includes more vivid colors as opposed to the more washed-out look of the 10th Anniversary transfer.

Soundtrack

• Main article: Reservoir Dogs (soundtrack)

Video game

A video game based on the film was released in 2006 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox. However, the game does not feature the likeness of any of the actors with the exception of Michael Madsen.

Links to other Tarantino films

As in any other movies directed or written by Quentin Tarantino, there are a lot of references and connections. Big Kahuna Burger is a fictional burger place that Tarantino uses in his films including Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Death Proof. Mr. White's real name is Lawrence Dimmick. Quentin Tarantino makes a cameo as suburbanite Jimmy Dimmick in Pulp Fiction. At one point, Mr. White mentions that he knows a nurse who could help Mr. Orange, possibly referring to Jimmy's wife, Bonnie. In an extended scene on the Special Edition tenth anniversary DVD ("Doing My Job"), Nice Guy Eddie refers to the nurse he called as "Bonnie"; Mr. White argues that he needs a "real" doctor, after which Eddie refers to the situation at hand as "The Bonnie Situation", the name of the third chapter in Pulp Fiction.

In Kill Bill: Vol. 2, when The Bride is buried alive she removes a straight razor from her boot in a similar fashion to Mr. Blonde before the infamous ear-cutting scene, and both pairs of boots are of similar design. The woman that Mr. Pink pulls out of the car that he hijacks is played by Linda Kaye, who later played the woman that Marsellus Wallace shoots in Pulp Fiction. According to Tarantino, Vic Vega (Mr. Blonde) and Pulp Fiction's Vincent Vega are brothers. Both Vic and Vincent Vega make references to having a heart attack, and both say that they don't like to receive orders. A commercial for "Jack Rabbit Slim's" is heard on the radio in the warehouse just after the ear-cutting scene. In Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega takes Mia Wallace to Jack Rabbit Slim's. Before Mr. White, Mr. Pink and Eddie leave to drive the cars, they argue about who the rat is. At one point Eddie mentions "Snake Charmer", Bill's alias in Kill Bill.

During Mr. White's recruitment for the job, Joe asks him about a former female partner named Alabama. This may be a reference to Alabama Whitman, a character in the film True Romance, which Tarantino wrote. Also during this scene, Joe asks about a man named Marsellus Spivey, referring to him as somebody who used to fence diamonds for Mr. White. It is likely he is a relative of the character Drexel Spivey, who was Alabama's pimp in True Romance.

References in popular culture

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Reservoir Dogs has frequently been referenced in other works due to its iconic nature. More specifically, the opening, slow motion credit sequence and the ear-cutting scene, especially.

• In the 1996 film Swingers, during a poker game, the characters mention the opening credits as "a great scene"; as they leave to go to a party, they are shown walking in slow motion in a similar fashion.
• In The Simpsons episode "Jazzy and the Pussycats", Lisa walks down the street with her new pets in a similar style to the same music. In another episode; "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious", the ultra-violent cartoon characters Itchy and Scratchy are shown re-enacting the ear-slicing scene and end up decapitating Tarantino.
• In the Red Dwarf three-part episode "Back in the Red", Lister, Kochanski, Kryten and Cat walk in slow motion to the same music as the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs.
• The album cover for Answer That and Stay Fashionable by AFI was inspired by the slow-motion scene.
• Jimmy Neutron Episode 30 "Send In the Clones" Jimmy creates 6 clones to do his chores. About 7 1/2 minutes into the episode there is a scene where all the Clones are walking in slow-mo while similar music as in Reservoir Dogs is playing.
• In the Swedish comedy-series NileCity 105,6 by comedy group Killinggänget, one of the most memorable scenes is a spoof of the ear-cutting scene, in which the cross-dressing homosexual fire-chief Greger kidnaps a sexshop-visitor, ties him up, and then tortures him with a big cod, while "Stuck in the Middle With You" plays on a boombox. Videoclip
• In episode 4 of the satirical news show CNNNN, Chas Licciardello, the Brussels correspondent, is shown tied up with an assailant like Mr. Blonde dancing around him with the same song playing. The shot cuts away just as the assailant brings out a knife, with the explanation of a "Technical Problem".
• ABC's The Chaser's War on Everything has a parody of the scene imagining what it would be like if Hugh Grant was in Mr. Blonde's role.
• Season 4, Episode 17 of The Pretender is an episode-long homage to Reservoir Dogs where Jarod infiltrates a gang that only knows each other by pseudonyms. The episode ends with all the gang members turning on each other and the police storming the place.
• Rammstein's 1997 music video "Du hast" was heavily inspired by Reservoir Dogs.
• DC Comics' first issue of the Hitman regular series, by Garth Ennis, features four killers at a table playing poker while they discuss the meaning of Reservoir Dogs, much like the characters in Reservoir Dogs discuss the meaning of Madonna's "Like a Virgin".
• In the film Sugar & Spice, one of the cheerleaders mentions seeing Reservoir Dogs and says they should use code-names when robbing the bank. Another cheerleader pleads that she wants to be Mrs. Pink, because she loves pink.
• The song "Scooby Snacks" by the Fun Lovin' Criminals features the lines "Look, I don't know anything about any fucking set-up, you can torture me all you want." / "Torture you, that's good, that's a good idea, I like that one" and the lines "I need you cool. Are you cool?" / "All right, I'm cool".
• In the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas there is a movie theater in downtown Los Santos that is playing a film titled Reservoir Dregs. The game is set in 1992, the year of both the L.A. riots and Reservoir Dogs' release.
• The scene where Mr. White takes Joe's book is overheard at the beginning of the song "Kung-Fu Devil" by AFI.
• The 6/07/07 episode of The Daily Show compared the leaders of the G8 to the characters of Reservoir Dogs.
• The music video for "Watch for the Hook" by Cool Breeze recreates many scenes from the film.
• The show America's Most Wanted profiled a gang of real-life thieves, whose leader was so obsessed with Reservoir Dogs he had the gang dress in identical black suits, ties, and sunglasses before committing their ill-fated robbery of a jewelry store.
• Saturday Night Live once featured a skit called "Quentin Tarantino's Welcome Back Kotter". The skit reenacts the title sequence from Reservoir Dogs, including the song Little Green Bag, with the Sweathogs in place of the Reservoir Dogs.
• Jay-Z has a song titled 'Reservoir Dogs' on his 1998 album, Hard Knock Life.
• Singer Alecia Moore took her stage name after watching the movie with friends, who they all agreed that she resembled the character Mr. Pink.

References

1. Persall, Steve (2002-08-27). "The 'Reservoir' watershed". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2007-05-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
2. ^ "Reservoir Dogs". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
3. http://www.filmsite.org/independentfilms3.html
4. http://snpp.com/episodes/3G03.html
5. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0600877/bio

External links

• Reservoir Dogs at IMDb
• Reservoir Dogs at Rotten Tomatoes
• Metacritic: Reservoir dogs
• The Reservoir Watershed - article about the historical importance of Reservoir Dogs
• 'Reservoir Dogs' FAQ on imdb
• What Happened To Mr. Pink at God Among Directors
• Reservoir Dogs videogame official site

• Misplaced Pages articles needing clarification from July 2007
• Articles with trivia sections from January 2008
• 1992 films
• 1992 Sundance Film Festival
• A Band Apart productions
• American films
• Crime thriller films
• Directorial debut films
• English-language films
• Films directed by Quentin Tarantino
• Heist films
• Gangster films
• Independent films
• Miramax films
• Films shot in Super 35
• Films about torture
• Films set in Los Angeles