Reservoir Dogs

Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 American ensemble crime film that depicts the events before and after a botched diamond heist. The film was the debut of director and writer Quentin Tarantino, and stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, and Michael Madsen. Tarantino and criminal-turned-author Edward Bunker have minor roles. It incorporates many themes that have become Tarantino's hallmarksâ€"violent crime, pop culture references, profanity, and a nonlinear storyline.

The film has become a classic of independent film and a cult hit. It was named "Greatest Independent Film of all Time" by Empire magazine. Reservoir Dogs was generally well received, and the cast was praised by many critics. Although it was not given much promotion upon release, the film became a modest success in the United States after grossing $2,832,029, recouping its $1.2 million budget. The film was more successful in the United Kingdom, grossing nearly £6.5 million, and it achieved higher popularity after the success of Tarantino's next directorial effort, Pulp Fiction. A soundtrack titled Reservoir Dogs: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was released featuring songs used in the film, which are mostly from the 1970s.

Plot

Eight men eat breakfast at a Los Angeles diner before their planned diamond heist, most of them unknown to each other. Six of them use aliases: Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Brown, Mr. Orange, Mr. Pink, and Mr. White. With them are mob boss Joe Cabot, the organizer of the heist, and his son/underboss, "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot. The initial scene contains no clues as to their actual identities or intended group purpose; the dialogue is entirely conversational and seemingly irrelevant to any exposition. During the course of the film, the major characters are sporadically introduced by subtitles (e.g., "Mr. White") and their character backstories are explored in subsequent, non-linear fashion. They leave the diner and the scene shifts to the opening titles.

The following scene is of a speeding car, in which Mr. White comforts Mr. Orange, who has been shot in the abdomen and is bleeding profusely, revealing they just performed the heist. They soon reach an abandoned warehouse. Mr. Pink eventually arrives and angrily suggests that the job was a setup based on the rapid police response. Mr. White tells Mr. Pink that Mr. Brown was killed while escaping, Mr. Blue is presumed dead and talk about Mr. Blonde, who murdered several civilians after the alarm was triggered. Mr. White is angered that Joe, an old friend of his, employed such a "psychopath" and agrees about a possible setup while Mr. Pink reveals that he escaped with the diamonds and hid them in a secure location. They argue over whether to take the now unconscious Mr. Orange to a hospital. Mr. White also reveals that he has told Mr. Orange his name and hometown, which was breaking the rules.

Mr. Blonde, having watched them from a distance, steps forward and ends the dispute regarding Mr. Orange. Mr. White berates him for his deadly rampage, but Mr. Blonde dismisses the criticism. He tells the others to wait because Eddie is on his way there. Mr. Blonde has also taken a police officer, Marvin Nash, hostage and the three men beat Nash in an attempt to find out if there is an informant. Eddie then arrives and orders Mr. Pink and Mr. White to assist him in retrieving the stolen diamonds and dispose of the hijacked vehicles, while Mr. Blonde stays with Nash and the unconscious Mr. Orange.

Alone with Mr. Blonde, Nash denies any knowledge of a setup, but Mr. Blonde is uninterested and tortures Nash for his own amusement, slashing Nash's face with a straight razor and severing his right ear. He then douses Nash with gasoline, but before he can ignite it, Mr. Orange springs to life and shoots and kills Mr. Blonde. Mr. Orange then reveals to Nash that he is an undercover cop, reassuring Nash that, upon Joe's arrival, a large police force is in position to raid the warehouse.

Eddie, Mr. Pink, and Mr. White return to the warehouse to find Mr. Blonde dead. Mr. Orange claims that Mr. Blonde was going to kill all of them and take the diamonds for himself. After impulsively pulling out his gun and killing Nash, Eddie rejects Mr. Orange’s claims, saying that Mr. Blonde was a close personal friend who had always remained loyal to his father. Joe then arrives and reveals that Mr. Blue is dead along with Mr. Brown. He confidently accuses Mr. Orange of being an informant, forcing Mr. White to defend his friend.

Joe, about to execute Mr. Orange, is stopped when Mr. White points his gun at him, and Eddie then takes aim on Mr. White, creating a Mexican standoff. Joe eventually shoots Mr. Orange, wounding him again; Mr. White shoots and kills Joe in response; Eddie shoots Mr. White, wounding him, who turns and shoots Eddie, killing him, as he falls.

Mr. Pink, who was hiding during the melee, takes the diamonds and flees, though the police are heard arriving and several shouts are heard as well as gunshots, implying Mr. Pink was shot by the police as he escaped. Badly wounded, Mr. White crawls to Mr. Orange and cradles him in his arms. However, Mr. Orange reveals to Mr. White that he is in fact an undercover cop. Devastated, Mr. White points his gun at Mr. Orange's head. The police storm the warehouse, demanding that Mr. White drop his gun. In response, Mr White shoots Orange and is then gunned down by the police as the film ends.

Cast

• Harvey Keitel as Mr. White (Lawrence Dimmick)
• Tim Roth as Mr. Orange (Det. Freddie Newandyke)
• Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink
• Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde (Vic Vega)
• Chris Penn as Nice Guy Eddie (Eddie Cabot)
• Lawrence Tierney as Joe Cabot
• Edward Bunker as Mr. Blue
• Quentin Tarantino as Mr. Brown
• Kirk Baltz as Marvin Nash
• Randy Brooks as Holdaway

Production

Quentin Tarantino had been working at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, and originally planned to shoot the film with his friends on a budget of $30,000 in a 16 mm format with producer Lawrence Bender playing a police officer chasing Mr. Pink. When actor Harvey Keitel became involved and agreed to act in the film and co-produce, he was cast as Mr. White. With Keitel's assistance, the filmmakers were able to raise $1.5 million to make the film.

Reservoir Dogs was, according to Tarantino, influenced by Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Tarantino said: "I didn't go out of my way to do a rip-off of The Killing, but I did think of it as my "Killing," my take on that kind of heist movie." The film's plot was suggested by the 1952 film Kansas City Confidential. Additionally, Joseph H. Lewis's 1955 film The Big Combo inspired the scene where a cop is tortured in a chair. Tarantino has denied that he plagiarized with Reservoir Dogs, instead claiming that he does homages. Also, the main characters being named after colors (Mr. Pink, White, Brown, etc.) was first seen in the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. The film also contains key elements similar to those found in Ringo Lam's 1987 film City on Fire.

Of his decision to not show the heist itself, Tarantino has said that the reason was initially budgetary but that he had always liked the idea of not showing it and stuck with that idea. He has said that the technique allows for the realization that the film is "about other things". He compared this to the work of a novelist, and has said that he wanted the film to be about something that is not seen and that he wanted it to "play with a real-time clock as opposed to a movie clock ticking".

The title for the film came from a patron at the Video Archives. While working there, Tarantino would often recommend little-known titles to customers, and when he suggested Au revoir les enfants, the patron misheard it as "reservoir dogs".

Reception

Box office

Reservoir Dogs premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1992. It became the festival's most talked-about film, and was subsequently picked up for distribution by Miramax Films. After being shown at several other film festivals, including in Cannes and Toronto, Reservoir Dogs opened in the United States in 19 theaters with a first week total of $147,839. It was expanded to 61 theaters and totaled $2,832,029 at the domestic box office. The film achieved box office success in the United Kingdom, where it was banned from home video release until 1995. During the period of unavailability on home video, the film was re-released in UK cinemas in June 1994.

Critical reaction

Reservoir Dogs has come to be seen as an important and highly-influential milestone of independent filmmaking. It has inspired many other independent films and is considered key in the development of independent cinema. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively gives the film a 92% based on reviews from 60 critics, and Metacritic carries an average rating of 78/100, based on 23 reviews. Empire magazine named it the "Greatest Independent Film" ever made.

At the film's release at the Sundance Film Festival, film critic Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News compared the effect of Reservoir Dogs to that of the 1895 film L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat, whereby audiences putatively observed a moving train approaching the camera and scrambled. Bernard claimed that Reservoir Dogs had a similar effect and people were not ready for it. Vincent Canby of The New York Times enjoyed the cast and the usage of non-linear storytelling. He similarly complimented Tarantino's directing and liked the fact that he did not often use close-ups in the film. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times also enjoyed the film and the acting, particularly that of Buscemi, Tierney and Madsen, and said "Tarantino's palpable enthusiasm, his unapologetic passion for what he's created, reinvigorates this venerable plot and, mayhem aside, makes it involving for longer than you might suspect." Critic James Berardinelli was of a similar opinion; he complimented both the cast and Tarantino's dialogue writing abilities. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post was also enthusiastic about the cast, complimenting the film on its "deadpan sense of humor".

Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic; he felt that the script could have been better and said that the film "feels like it's going to be terrific", but Tarantino's script does not have much curiosity about the characters. He also stated that "[Tarantino] has an idea, and trusts the idea to drive the plot." Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four also claiming that he enjoyed it, and that it was a very good film from a talented director, like other critics, he enjoyed the cast, but stated "I liked what I saw, but I wanted more."

The film has received substantial criticism for its strong violence and language. One scene that viewers found particularly unnerving was the ear-cutting scene; Madsen himself reportedly had great difficulty finishing it, especially after Kirk Baltz ad-libbed the desperate plea "I've got a little kid at home." Many people walked out during the film. During a screening at a film festival in Barcelona, fifteen people walked out, including horror film director Wes Craven and special makeup effects artist Rick Baker. Baker later told Tarantino to take the walkout as a "compliment" and explained that he found the violence unnerving because of its heightened sense of realism. Tarantino commented about it at the time: "It happens at every single screening. For some people the violence, or the rudeness of the language, is a mountain they can't climb. That's OK. It's not their cup of tea. But I am affecting them. I wanted that scene to be disturbing."

Critical analysis

Reservoir Dogs has often been seen as a prominent film in terms of on-screen violence. J.P. Telotte compared Reservoir Dogs to classic caper noir films and points out the irony in its ending scenes. Mark Irwin also made the connection between Reservoir Dogs and classic American noir. Caroline Jewers called Reservoir Dogs a "feudal epic" and paralleled the color pseudonyms to color names of medieval knights.

Critics have observed parallels between Reservoir Dogs and other films. For its nonlinear storyline, Reservoir Dogs has often been compared to Rashomon. Critic John Hartl compared the ear-cutting scene to the shower murder scene in Psycho and Tarantino to David Lynch. He furthermore explored parallels between Reservoir Dogs and Glengarry Glen Ross. Todd McCarthy, who called the film "undeniably impressive", was of the opinion that it was influenced by Mean Streets, Goodfellas and The Killing. After this film, Tarantino himself was also compared to Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah, John Singleton, Gus Van Sant, and Abel Ferrara.

A frequently cited comparison has been to Tarantino's second and more successful film Pulp Fiction, especially since the majority of audiences saw Reservoir Dogs after the success of Pulp Fiction. Comparisons have been made regarding the black humor in both the films, the theme of accidents, and more concretely, the style of dialogue and narrative style that Tarantino incorporates into both films. Specifically the relationship between whites and blacks plays a big part in the filmsâ€"though underplayed in Reservoir Dogs. Stanley Crouch of The New York Times compared the way the white criminals speak of black people in Reservoir Dogs to the way they are spoken of in Scorsese's Mean Streets and Goodfellas. Crouch observed the way black people are looked down upon in Reservoir Dogs, but also the way that the criminals accuse each other of "verbally imitating" black men and the characters' apparent sexual attraction to black actress Pam Grier.

In February 2012, as part of an ongoing series of live dramatic readings of film scripts being staged with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), director Jason Reitman cast black actors in the originally white cast: Laurence Fishburne as Mr. White; Terrence Howard as Mr. Blonde; Anthony Mackie as Mr. Pink; Cuba Gooding Jr. as Mr. Orange; Chi McBride as Joe Cabot; Anthony Anderson as Nice Guy Eddie (Joe Cabot's son); Common as both Mr. Brown and Officer Nash (the torture victim of Mr. Blonde), and Patton Oswalt as Holdaway (the mentor cop who was originally played by a black actor in the film)â€"critic Elvis Mitchell noted that this was taking the source material back to its roots since the characters "all sound like black dudes."

Accolades

The film was screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. It won the Critic's Award at the 4th Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in February 1993 which Tarantino attended. The film was also nominated for the prestigious Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

American Film Institute Lists

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
  • “Mr. Blonde” (Vic Vega) - Nominated Villain
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
  • Stuck in the Middle with You - Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
  • "Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?" - Nominated
• AFI's 10 Top 10 - Nominated Gangster Film

Reservoir Dogs ranks at No. 97 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.

Home media

In the United Kingdom, the release of VHS rental video was delayed until 1995 due to the British Board of Film Classification initially refusing the film a home video certificate (UK releases are required to be certified separately for theatrical release and for viewing at home). The latter is a requirement by law due to the Video Recordings Act 1984. Following the UK VHS release approval, Polygram released a "Mr Blonde Deluxe Edition", which included an interview with Tarantino and several memorabilia associated with the character Mr. Blonde, such as sunglasses and a chrome toothpick holder.

Region 1 DVDs of Reservoir Dogs have been released multiple times. The first release was a single two-sided disc from LIVE Entertainment, released in June 1997 and featuring both pan-and-scan and letterbox versions of the film. Five years later, Artisan Entertainment (who changed their name from LIVE Entertainment in the interim) released a two-disc 10th anniversary edition featuring multiple covers color-coded to match the nicknames of five of the characters (Pink, White, Orange, Blonde and Brown) and a disc of bonus features such as interviews with the cast and crew.

For the film's 15th anniversary, Lionsgate (which had purchased Artisan in the interim) produced a two-disc anniversary edition with a remastered 16x9 transfer and a new supplement, but not all of the extra features from the 10th Anniversary edition. In particular, interviews with the cast and crew were removed, and a new 48-minute-long feature called "Tributes and Dedications" was included. The packaging for the 15th anniversary edition is fancier: the discs are enclosed in a large matchbook, and the matchbook is in a thin aluminum case made to resemble a gas can.

Soundtrack

The Reservoir Dogs: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was the first soundtrack for a Quentin Tarantino film and set the structure his later soundtracks would follow. This includes the extensive use of snippets of dialogue from the film. The soundtrack has selections of songs from the 1960s to '80s. Only the group Bedlam recorded original songs for the film. The radio station "K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies" played a prominent role in the film. The DJ for the radio was chosen to be Steven Wright, a comedian known for his deadpan delivery of jokes.

An unusual feature of the soundtrack was the choice of songs; Tarantino has said that he feels the music to be a counterpoint to the on-screen violence and action. He also stated that he wished for the film to have a 1950s feel while using '70s music. A prominent instance of this is the torture scene to the tune of "Stuck in the Middle with You".

Bedlam was a 1990s rock group from Nashville fronted by Jay Joyce, who were signed to MCA Records. Their album Into the Coals was released in 1992. Further members were Chris Feinstein (bass) and Doug Lancio. "Magic Carpet Ride" is a cover of the 1968 Steppenwolf song. "Harvest Moon" is written by Jay Joyce.

Sandy Rogers' "Fool for Love" initially was title song to Robert Altman's 1985 film Fool for Love.

Track listing

1. "And Now Little Green Bag..." - dialogue extract performed by Steven Wright (0:15)
2. "Little Green Bag" - The George Baker Selection (3:15)
3. "Rock Flock of Five" - dialogue extract performed by Steven Wright (0:11)
4. "Hooked on a Feeling" - Blue Swede (2:53)
5. "Bohemiath" - dialogue extract performed by Steven Wright (0:34)
6. "I Gotcha" - Joe Tex (2:27)
7. "Magic Carpet Ride" - Bedlam (5:10)
8. "Madonna Speech" - dialogue extract performed by Quentin Tarantino, Edward Bunker, Lawrence Tierney, Steve Buscemi, and Harvey Keitel (0:59)
9. "Fool for Love" by Sandy Rogers (3:25)
10. "Super Sounds" - dialogue extract performed by Steven Wright (0:19)
11. "Stuck in the Middle with You" - Stealers Wheel (3:23)
12. "Harvest Moon" - Bedlam (2:38)
13. "Let's Get a Taco" - dialogue extract performed by Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth (1:02)
14. "Keep on Truckin'" - dialogue extract performed by Steven Wright (0:16)
15. "Coconut" - Harry Nilsson (3:50)
16. "Home of Rock" - dialogue extract performed by Steven Wright (0:05)

Video game

A video game based on the film was released in 2006 for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. However, the game does not feature the likeness of any of the actors with the exception of Michael Madsen. GameSpot called it "an out and out failure". It caused controversy for its amount of violence and was banned in Australia and New Zealand.

Remake

Kaante, a Bollywood film released in 2002, is a remake of Reservoir Dogs. The film's central plot is based on Tarantino's film, and also borrows plot points from The Usual Suspects and Heat. Tarantino has been quoted as saying that Kaante is his favorite among the many rip-offs of his film.

References

External links

• Official website
• Reservoir Dogs at the Internet Movie Database
• Reservoir Dogs at the TCM Movie Database
• Reservoir Dogs at AllMovie
• Reservoir Dogs at Box Office Mojo
• Reservoir Dogs at Rotten Tomatoes
• Reservoir Dogs at Metacritic