When the Writer Actually Loves Movies: A Reservoir Dogs Script Analysis

The script for Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 debut film, Reservoir Dogs, has become the stuff of Hollywood legend. It’s what every aspiring writer dreams of: writing a script so good that the industry has no choice but to let you in. But, even though it may seem on the surface that Quentin Tarantino was just some guy who picked up a pen one day and instantly found success, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. You see, Tarantino actually loves movies. During his youth, he was obsessed with them, sometimes racking up more than five movies a day during his shifts at the video store he worked at. And believe it or not, every single one of those movies he watched educated him, inspired him, and trained him to be an amazing writer – whether he realized it was happening or not. So when he sat down and started writing Reservoir Dogs, he already had an immense understanding of the culture around film that takes most people a lifetime to achieve. And the results are a movie that builds off of every cliche you’d find within a classic heist film, yet somehow remains completely original.

OPENING IMAGE

The film opens with our ensemble of characters shooting the shit around a cafe table: Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde, Mr. White, Mr. Orange, Mr. Brown, Mr. Blue, Joe (the boss), and Nice Guy Eddie (the boss’s son). As of right now, we have no idea who these characters are, how they know each other, and why they’re all using codenames (but don’t worry, we find out soon enough).

SET UP

As the scene continues, we get to know a little bit more about these guys. In what appears to be a one-dimensional introduction of the characters having a lighthearted conversation, it eventually becomes clear that every sentence out of every character's mouth says something more revealing about their personalities (with the exception of Mr. Pink and Mr. Brown, who swapped dialogue so that Tarantino could be the person delivering the “Like a Virgin” speech). I’m about to spoil the whole film by the way, so stop reading if you haven’t seen this movie (although it did come out in 1992, so that’s your fault).

When Joe’s manic flipping through an address book annoys Mr. White, Mr. White snatches it out of his hand. Now, Joe’s clearly their boss and the one giving orders, but Mr. White has no problem going against him in front of everybody. This becomes one of Mr. White’s main points of conflict throughout the film as he questions Joe’s leadership abilities. When Joe gets mad, Mr. Blonde pops in and jokingly offers to shoot Mr. White. While he’s teasing now, Mr. Blonde’s primary conflict later on in the film is that he’s quick to turn to violence, causing problems for everyone else in the gang.

When Joe finally gets up to pay for their meal, he requests that everyone chip in a tip for the waitress while he’s gone. And when he gets back, he notices that somebody didn’t throw in (in the script it’s Mr. White, but the film switched it to Mr. Pink). Joe interrogates the group, wanting to know which one of them held out. Without hesitation, Mr. Orange gives up Mr. White’s name. And what is Mr. Orange’s role in this whole ordeal? That’s right, he’s the rat that sets the whole plot in motion.

And right at the end, with Joe’s comment about them being infants, we learn one more thing about these guys: they cannot and will not be able to work together. Let’s continue.

INCITING INCIDENT

Like many Tarantino scripts, Reservoir Dogs plays with its timeline a little bit. So when determining the inciting incident, there are a couple of ways one could go about it. Since we’re analyzing the script itself, and not the story, we’re going to take the events of the film as they’re told to us. 

Right after the opening scene and opening credit sequence, we immediately cut to the events AFTER the heist. This is the first twist on the genre that Tarantino provides us with (and what the film has become known for). Here we have a stereotypical heist-gone-wrong film, and yet we never even see the heist.

When the scene begins, we find Mr. White driving a seriously injured Mr. Orange to the rendezvous spot, hoping to get some medical attention and figure out where the hell things went wrong.

When the two men finally get to the meetup spot (which is just an abandoned Los Angeles warehouse), Mr. White drags Mr. Orange’s barely-alive body inside and sets him on the floor. Mr. Orange begs Mr. White to take him to a doctor to save him from dying, but Mr. White can’t risk getting everyone busted–especially after the heist went bad.

Suddenly, Mr. Pink bursts through the door, exclaiming right away that he knows what went wrong: somebody set them up.

So, the inciting incident is not them planning the heist, the heist going wrong, or even the heist itself, but rather the realization that within their crew, somebody is a rat.

DEBATE

Once it becomes clear that somebody in the crew was a rat, Mr. Pink and Mr. White attempt to unravel how the heist went wrong in the first place (Mr. Orange passes out from blood loss in the other room).

As they have their heated conversation, we learn some more about these guys. The first being that Mr. White is too trusting, already prepared to give Mr. Pink his real name. The second being that Mr. Blonde is the source of the bloodbath at the diamond store, having killed multiple people unnecessarily. Tensions continue to build with every second that goes by without the rest of the crew showing up, but there is one bit of good news: Mr. Pink’s got the diamonds.

Mr. Pink and Mr. White start debating the risks of taking Mr. Orange to a hospital. Mr. White, who has obviously developed a relationship with Mr. Orange over the past couple of weeks, says they should do it. Mr. Pink, on the other hand, argues for letting him die. A fight ensues, guns are drawn, and right when it looks like things are about to go past the point of no return, the voice of someone new is heard from the corner of the warehouse…

BREAK INTO TWO

With the reemergence of Mr. Blonde, it seems the gang is one step closer to figuring out what’s going on. He might have answers, he might have spoken to somebody, and since he’s proven himself to be a stone-cold killer, he’s definitely NOT the rat.

FUN AND GAMES

With the reintroduction of Mr. Blonde, tensions start to build once again.

Mr. Pink acts as a mediator and calms everyone down. He doesn’t give a shit about who’s mad at who right now; he just wants to find out who’s the rat.

When the two men follow Mr. Blonde to his car, he pops his trunk to reveal the grand surprise: a tied-up police officer whom he had taken hostage. He’s somehow even crazier than we thought.

MIDPOINT

At the midpoint of the script, Tarantino starts giving us more insight into who these guys are and how they got hired for this heist. The first being none other than Mr. Blonde.

Mr. Blonde (real name Vic Vega) enters Joe’s office to talk to him and Eddie. It’s revealed that Vic had just gotten out of prison after serving time on Joe’s behalf. We’re not quite sure the details of this situation, but one thing’s for sure: Vic could have given up Joe’s name and walked, but he refused to snitch. Joe’s obviously very grateful for this, and in return, he sets Vic up with a fake job in Long Beach to keep his parole officer off his back. That’s when Eddie proposes another idea.

BAD TO WORSE

After the chapter on Mr. Blonde, we intercut back and forth between the warehouse and Nice Guy Eddie’s car.

At the warehouse, the three men take turns beating the shit out of the cop, hoping to get answers.

When we cut to Nice Guy Eddie’s car, he‘s driving towards the warehouse while speaking to an associate on the phone.

At this point, nobody knows what’s going on, tensions are high across the board, and everything’s rapidly falling apart. Nice Guy Eddie finally gets to the warehouse, and he’s pissed beyond belief.

Nice Guy Eddie, desperate for control, orders everyone to listen to him once and for all: there is no set-up, Pink and White are going to follow him to retrieve the diamonds, a doctor will be called for Orange, and Blonde is to watch over the warehouse. No ifs, ands, or buts. Until anybody gets in touch with Joe, he’s in charge.

Ah, yes, the most infamous scene of the movie (and possibly the decade of the 90s). Immediately after Eddie, White, and Pink leave the room, Blonde takes up the opportunity to torture the cop while “Stuck in the Middle With You” plays on the radio. Not because he wants information, but just because it’ll be so much fun. Honestly, this scene has been talked about so much that I don’t really think there’s anything new I can bring to the conversation. So instead, I’ll just jump ahead to the big reveal at the end of the torture scene:

BREAK INTO THREE

After the reveal that Mr. Orange (real name Freddy) is an undercover police officer, we once again jump back to before the heist, this time focusing on Mr. White and Mr. Orange (in the final film, these chapters were separated).

Mr. Orange (real name Freddy) rushes into a diner excitedly to alert a man named Holdaway (who we can assume is his Captain or something?) that he’s been selected to participate in Joe’s next heist. As far as he can tell, nobody suspects anything about him, and he’ll be able to arrest everybody once this thing is over with.

The “Commode Story” is revealed to be a rehearsed anecdote for Freddy to tell to Joe and the gang in order to convince him he’s a legit criminal and can be trusted. More specifically, it’s a made-up story about how Freddy almost got caught selling weed in a bathroom by six cops and a drug-sniffing dog. I’m not going to spend too much time discussing this, as it’s not absolutely crucial to the rest of the plot (although it does help establish Mr. White and Mr. Orange’s relationship with one another), but I do recommend reading or watching the scene whenever you get a chance. It’s arguably one of the best-directed scenes in any Tarantino movie.

After this, we get to the “Mr. White” chapter of the script, which is completely different from the final film. In the script, everything we learn about Mr. White is through Freddy’s POV as he attempts to find out White’s real name and criminal history. In the film, Mr. White’s chapter is much more similar to Mr. Blonde’s in that it primarily consists of him and Joe discussing the heist.

Anyway, after the “Commode Story” sequence, we finally get some insight as to what the plan is for the heist. We cut to Mr. White and Mr. Orange staking out the jewelry store and going over everybody’s responsibilities:

As of now, we finally know mostly everything about what occurred before the heist (aside from the backgrounds of the lesser-seen characters). But there’s still one thing we haven’t learned yet: what happened between the heist going wrong and everyone meeting back up at the warehouse…until now.

Finally, we’re all caught up and can jump back to the present moment…just in time for the climax.

Another side note: In the original script, you’ll notice a scene that never made the cut that consists of Nice Guy Eddie driving back to the warehouse with Mr. White and Mr. Pink. It’s clear why it was cut (kind of just wastes time), but I recommend checking it out, as many elements were later recycled for Tarantino’s next film, Pulp Fiction (Bonnie the nurse, little black medical books, etc).

Okay, back to the finale.

FINALE

Mr. Pink, Mr. White, and Nice Guy Eddie return to the warehouse to discover that the place is a disaster. The cop’s missing an ear, Blonde is dead, and Orange is rambling on some fake story about what happened.

Mr. White, having already formed such a tight bond with Mr. Orange, completely buys his story. After all, he did see him get shot. Eddie knows Blonde wouldn’t do that, so he’s not buying it for a second. Then, finally, Joe walks through the door.

Now, we’ve reached the most controversial moment in the film: the Mexican Standoff. Tarantino has endlessly been criticized for this scene’s obvious resemblance to the final scene of Ringo Lam’s film, City on Fire. Tarantino, who eventually became notorious for homages to older films, didn’t deny that he was inspired by the movie. But, like I said, when you have a writer who’s inspired by every film he’s ever watched, there’s going to be some similarities. Additionally, Lam had no problem with Tarantino’s film, saying, “he took the last 10 minutes of my movie and made an entire movie about it”. So, is it more stealing or paying homage? That’s for you to decide.

Back to the movie.

Just like that, Eddie’s dead, Joe’s dead, Mr. White’s going to die, Mr. Orange is still bleeding out on the floor, and the police have finally arrived on the scene. It’s complete chaos. Mr. Pink’s the only one who manages to survive the whole thing without any bullet wounds, but even he can be heard having a confrontation with the police outside.

CLOSING IMAGE

A mortally wounded Mr. White makes his way over to Mr. Orange, cradles his body, and sets his head on his lap gently. All this carnage for defending a man he didn’t even know. That’s when Mr. Orange hits him with the news.

The last thing we see before we cut to black is the look on Mr. White’s devastated face, just before the cops blow him away.

WHY IT’S GREAT

As I said before, this movie is not amazing because of its overt use of homages, classic heist movie stereotypes, and recognizable plot, but rather how it subverts these gangster movie staples to create something entirely new. It has an ensemble of interesting characters, reveals the plot creatively, builds tension slowly, has what many consider to be the best dialogue in movie history, and, as Tarantino likes to say, “delivers the goods”.