Dissecting Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs'

Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs'

Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 heist crime thriller written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, his 1st feature length film. In this analysis, I will look at some of the themes in this film as I saw them. When I saw this film years ago—a year or 2 after it came out—I liked it, but it wasn’t among my favorite Tarantino films, definitely not among my favorite gangster films. There were things in this film that I felt added color to the story like the dialogue, of course, and the anecdotes especially the 1 given by Mr. Brown and his interpretation of Madonna’s song ‘Like a Virgin’—interesting banter but nothing that made sense to the plot, just filler. 

Recently, I watched the film and took notes from it for my meetup group—we were meeting to discuss the film—and after doing so slowly, over the course of 4 days of careful note-taking, I came away so much respect for the film’s writing and overall economy that I rank it as one of the best gangster films ever made and still, to date, Tarantino’s best feature. There is zero fat in this film! Everything in it, no matter how small—even the songs played on K-Billy’s Super Sounds—is crucial to the plot, understanding the dynamics in how and why the characters interact the way they do, the reason they say what they say, why they are named colors, why certain characters are named certain colors and, most importantly, the role women play in a film where there are virtually no women at all! 

A testament to Tarantino’s writing is his ability to take the many metaphorical themes contained in this film and to work these themes organically into situations and dialogue that seems as random as situations and conversations we encounter in everyday life. This is why I never “got it” watching this movie in the past, it seems so natural. Everything, from the banter to the characters in this film are drawn from our real life collective experiences. His characters behave like real people, they talk like real people: they’re racist; they use slang; they don’t talk mechanically as though each and every word they say has been carefully organized by a writer who cares more about the deepness of his story than he does about real people—this is how Tarantino hides the intelligence in this and all his films, like the scene where Freddie—or Mr. Orange—seems to vanish into the wall of graffiti as he reads his script. Anyway, here are the themes as I see them in Reservoir Dogs. Enjoy!

Metaphors

Colors

The colors in this film are metaphors. White is synonymous with innocence, naiveté, and inexperience—not necessarily from the standpoint of good; Mr. White is a criminal. The color White, in his case, is how he chooses to deal with the situation concerning Mr. Orange whom he completely rules out as an undercover cop. 

The colors in the film are also used to represent social and racial differences and that no group or race is exempt from the lower angels of our nature, in this case, deception.  Anybody can hurt you and until you know that person you have to keep your heart out of it. The colors in this film are also metaphors for different treatment according to class. In the diner scene at the beginning of the film, when Mr. Pink is explaining his reasons for not tipping, he asks Mr. White why society says he should tip waitresses and not tip a worker at McDonalds when they are both serving food to customers. His view foreshadows the cynical view he has of his fellow robbers after the diamond heist and this also foreshadows Mr. White discounting Mr. Orange as the undercover cop who rats them out. 

Sex

Although there are no women in this film (at least in starring roles), There’s a latent masculine/feminine dynamic between Mr. White and Mr. Orange. Mr. White is the feminine side of their relationship, alternating between that a nurturing mother and a deceived woman in denial concerning her unfaithful lover. 

The mother

When Mr. Orange is bleeding and hysterical on the warehouse floor notice that the manner in which Mr. White comforts and cradles him is the manner that a mother comforts and cradle her child. Also notice the childlike quality of Mr. Orange’s voice in the scene. And also notice how defensive Mr. White becomes at Mr. Pink’s theory that Mr. Orange could be the snitch? 

The Lover

The dialogue in this film tells the story 1st, then the story plays out according to the dialogue. 

At the beginning of the film, the robbers are sitting around a table in a diner debating what Madonna’s song ‘Like a Virgin’ means. Mr. Brown alludes to Mr. White and Mr. Orange’s relationship with his interpretation of the song, saying that it’s about a woman who’s had a lot of sex and meets a guy with a penis so big that the pain makes her feel like a virgin. The virgin in Mr. Brown’s interpretation of this song is Mr. White, white being generally associated with virginity. Remember, Mr. White never got caught on a job, he almost got caught—he tells Mr. Pink— but his instincts told him one of the guys was undercover and he pulled out. In this respect—not ever having been “fucked” in the sense of being caught by an undercover cop, Mr. White is a virgin. Mr. Orange, in Madonna’s song ‘Like a Virgin,’ is the dude with the giant penis that makes her feel like a virgin. Remember, Mr. White tells Mr. Pink at the beginning of the film that he had to pull out of a job because his instincts told him that one of the guys was a cop. The reason Mr. White doesn’t get this feeling about Mr. Orange is because they had gotten too close after Mr. Orange got shot in the belly. That shot to his belly arouses feminine instincts in Mr. White that blinds him to reason and objectivity. An early hint that Mr. White would become too close to Orange is them sitting next to each other in the diner. It is easy to become subjective being too close to something or someone, any situation. To see things for what they are, we need some distance which is shown in how close White and Orange are sitting together relative to Mr. Pink who is sitting on the other side of the table. Mr. Pink’s objectivity is represented by his coldness and detachment which comes through when he gives his reasons for not being a tipper. His callousness shows that he doesn’t let his emotions override his principles and that he is able to cut off his emotions and think rationally, foreshadowing the tension between he and Mr. White over whether or not Mr. Orange is a cop. Another interesting thing about Mr. Pink not tipping is that a “tipper” is the same thing as a snitch. This explains the sour look on Mr. Orange’s face in this scene, sour not just on account of Mr. Pink being a cheapskate, but sour because he knows that Mr. Pink isn’t naive and he’s been, in the metaphor of Madonna’s song, “fucked” before. In another allusion to sex and the Like a Virgin metaphor, Mr. Pink tells his undercover cop mentor “I’m up his ass,” meaning Joe’s ass.

Late in the movie, the men are in a car and on their way to meet the boss, Joe, to go over the heist. They strike up what seems like a random discussion on Black women and White women and how much the women take off their men. Pink insists that Black women and White women differ in how much abuse and mistreatment they take off men. Black women don’t take the abuse from men that White women take. The Black women who takes no stuff is him and the White women who are passive is Mr. White. Again, Tarantino uses colorful dialogue exchanges to foreshadow the characters and plot.

Female intuition

The “gut” plays a big role in this film: 2 Corinthians 5:7-“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”  Throughout the film, characters refer to their instincts, their gut, their intuition. Following the heist, Mr. Pink kicks himself for not following his gut and pulling out of the heist; Mr. Pink says he avoided getting caught in a previous job by following his instincts; at the end of the film, Joe Cabott kicks himself for ignoring his gut feeling about Mr. Orange. Our instincts are our 6th sense, there to detect what we can’t pick up on the surface. The colors Joe assigns the robbers have an obvious purpose but the colors also serve 2 symbolic functions: 1) to put everybody on an even playing field where they all have to rely on their instincts, since Joe orders them not to share any of their personal information; and 2) the colors themselves, within the context of trust, are all races, all demographics—rich, poor, etc.— and how none of us have a monopoly on evil, or in this case, deception. This is why Mr. Pink doesn’t trust anybody because he knows that no man or woman is above evil; and this is also why Mr. White trusts Mr. Orange, discounting even the possibility he could be an undercover cop simply because he is bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to the belly. Being a victim doesn’t make him innocent. Orange, that is. 

It is an accepted belief that women possess a special instinct over men known as female intuition. This is why, in the film, Mr. Orange is the only robber who is shot in the “gut” by a WOMAN who points him out as the undercover cop. Backing up this assessment is Mr. Pink, whose color pink is associated with femininity. This is why he suspects Mr. Orange as a cop right off the bat. Women can sense when a man is lying and the man in this equation and Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ song is Mr. Orange. Another thing: at the beginning of the film, Joe has a little black book open trying to figure out a name in it. But it’s not the name that has him puzzled, it’s his “gut” that is bothering him. Mr. Orange is also at the table and this is why at the end of the film, Joe says that he felt something in his gut about Mr. Orange that didn’t feel right. Him looking in his little black book and trying to figure out who Toby Wong is represented the unsettled feeling Joe had in his gut about Mr. Orange.  

Two-face

Mr. Orange and Mr. White are contrasted in the film. Mr. Orange pretends to be someone he isn’t which makes him a liar. Mr. Blonde is a psychopath but he doesn’t hide behind a fake persona plus he has a great deal of character, shown by him doing 4 years in Prison instead of ratting out his boss.

In the flashback scene where Mr. Blonde meets with Nice Eddie and Joe after getting out on parole, they make no effort to hide their names behind a color and they don’t have a problem with bringing him in on the diamond job because he did 4 years in prison for Joe when he could have ratted his way out of it.

Orange as a fruit is associated with sunshine but in this situation the sun is false or pretending to be something that it is not. 

Take the ‘u’ out of sun and replace it with an ‘o’ and put the word son in the Biblical context in which it is commonly associated with-Christ, the son of God-and the color orange, sun, and Son, within the context of the film, is the AntiChrist or someone pretending to be someone he’s not.