Reservoir Dogs Explained In a Nutshell

Reservoir Dogs is about a group of professional criminals that are hired to do a jewelry heist. However, the heist goes terribly wrong and everyone is starting to suspect there is a cop in the group.

The Reservoir Dogs Movie Trailer

The Reservoir Dogs Movie Review Breakdown

Tagline: Every dog has his day.
Who is in it? Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Quentin Tarantino
Genre: Crime – Mystery
Was it Mysterious and Crime oriented? Totally.
Would this movie be for every crime mystery fan? Yes.
Should you see it? YES!
Run Time: 99 minutes
Rating: R

• Stuck in the middle with you

The Verdict

Don’t ask me why, but when I was a teenager I hated Quentin Tarantino movies. Everything looked ridiculous and there was tons of dialog that bored me. I simply didn’t like his movies, I didn’t like his voice, and most of all I didn’t like his face! Well that little phase didn’t last too long because Tarantino movies rock. All of the things I hated,  I now love now that I understand his style (I still don’t like his face though!).  Reservoir Dogs was one of Tarantino’s first movies and this was the flick that really put him on the map.  Dialog and storytelling is a big part of Quentin Tarantino’s style.  This flick’s story isn’t really THAT interesting when told in chronological order, but is pretty darn good when told out of sequence (the way the movie tells it).  That jumbled mess of a story is what makes a movie his own.

In order to explain this movie  I will lay out the story in the events they would’ve happened, not the way in which the movie shows  you.  Since the order is what makes the REALLY simple story unique, this will severely shorten the explanation because I won’t have to explain previous events, so here goes…  A crime boss named Joe and his son ‘Nice Guy Eddie’ set up a diamond heist using a group of people they trust.  The guys in the group do not know each other and for good reason.  If they are caught, they can’t blab to the cops about anyone because they don’t know any details.  The men in the heist are only known as a color.  We have Mr. White, Mr. Brown, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange and Mr. Pink.

If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then tell him his thumb’s next. After that he’ll tell you if he wears ladies underwear. I’m hungry. Let’s get a taco.

Mr. Orange is an undercover cop that infiltrated the crew to take down the leaders and nobody knows (yet).  During the heist the shit hits the fan and Mr. Blonde goes nuts and starts executing people.  The cops rush in and several of the guys die.  Mr. Orange, Mr. White, and Mr. Brown get away in a car but Mr. Brown dies of a head injury forcing Orange and White to flee and steal a car.   During the car jacking Orange gets shot in the stomach and White takes him to the safe house where they were supposed to all meet but nobody is there.  Mr. Pink arrives and ends  up getting in an argument with White about the possibility of there being a rat in the group.  Blonde Shows up and reveals that he got away by taking a cop hostage, and he is in his trunk.  Nice Guy Eddie arrives and Pink reveals that he got the diamonds but he stashed them somewhere safe and they leave to get them.  During their absence, Blonde begins to torture the cop and Orange shoots and kills him.

Nice Guy Eddie and the guys come back to find Blonde Dead, the cop disfigured, and Orange still laying in his own blood but with an unloaded handgun.  Nice Guy Eddie gets pissed at Orange because he and Blonde were best friends, and Orange makes up a story that Blonde went crazy and disfigured the cop and was about to steal the diamonds and kill everyone.  Eddie doesn’t buy it and shoots the cop, then  accuses Orange of being the rat and White stands up for him.  Joe the boss comes in and also accuses Orange of being a cop and points a gun at him.  White points a gun at Joe and Eddie points his gun at White.  Pink tries to calm everyone down  and remain professional.  Joe then shoots Orange, White Shoots Joe and Eddie.  Joe and Eddie die instantly and White is hunkered over in pain from getting shot in the stomach.  Pink comes out of his hiding spot and leaves with the diamonds.  White crawls over to Orange and holds him, they are both dying from fatal shots to the stomach.  Orange says he is a cop, and White loses it as the police burst into the warehouse.  White shoots Orange in the head and then is killed by the police.  The End.

Official Nutshell-Movies Explanation

Reservoir Dogs (1992): The surviving criminals of a botched jewelry heist kill each other trying to figure out if there is a cop in the crew.

Bonus Video

Fun Facts about Reservoir Dogs

• Quentin Tarantino wanted James Woods to play a role in the film, and made him five different cash offers. Woods’ agent refused the offers without ever mentioning it to Woods as the sums offered were well below what Woods would usually receive. When Tarantino and Woods later met for the first time, Woods learned of the offer and was annoyed enough to get a new agent. Tarantino avoided telling Woods which role he was offered “because the actor who played the role was magnificent anyway”. It is widely accepted that the role that Tarantino was referring to was Mr. Orange.
• The film contains 272 uses of the word “fuck”.
• Quentin Tarantino originally wrote the role of Mr. Pink for himself. Steve Buscemioriginally auditioned for the part of Mr. White. Michael Madsen originally auditioned for the part of Mr Pink. George Clooney read for the role of Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega but was turned down, and Christopher Walken refused the same role. Vincent Gallo turned down the role of Mr. Pink. Samuel L. Jackson auditioned for the role of Mr. Orange. Once Tim Roth was cast, Quentin Tarantino originally wanted him to play Mr. Blonde or Mr. Pink.Robert Forster and Timothy Carey auditioned for the part of Joe Cabot, and the film is dedicated to Carey.
• The final answer print of the film came back from the lab just 3 days before its world premiere at Sundance.
• During filming, a paramedic was kept on the set to make sure that Mr. Orange’s (Tim Roth) amount of blood loss was kept consistent and realistic to that of a real gunshot victim.
• To avoid alienating the film’s backers, producer Lawrence Bender had the tamer scenes shot first, so that the dailies would strengthen the backers’ confidence before getting to the nasty, violent scenes.
• Michael Madsen had difficulty filming the torture scenes. He was particularly reluctant when he was required to hit actor Kirk Baltz. When the cop, pleading for his life, says that he has a child at home (a line not in the script), Madsen, himself a new father at the time, was so disturbed by the idea of leaving a child fatherless that he couldn’t finish the scene.
• At several points, Tim Roth had lain in the pool of fake blood for so long that the blood dried out and he had to be peeled off the floor, which took several minutes.
• Mr. Orange’s apartment was actually the upstairs to the warehouse where most of the movie takes place. The filmmakers redecorated it to look like an apartment in order to save money on finding a real apartment.
• The suit Harvey Keitel wears was his own. It had been a specially made gift from French designer Agnès B..
• This movie has no orchestral score. All the music you hear are prerecorded tracks.
• Premiere voted this movie as one of “The 25 Most Dangerous Movies”.
• Armed with $30,000 and a 16mm camera, Quentin Tarantino was all set to make the film with a bunch of friends, including his producing partner Lawrence Bender who was going to play Nice Guy Eddie. It was then that Tarantino received an answerphone message from Harvey Keitel, asking if he could not only be in the film but help produce it. Keitel had gotten involved via the wife of Bender’s acting class teacher, who had managed to get a copy of the script to him. Keitel’s involvement helped raise the budget to $1.5 million.
• Madonna - who is the main topic of the opening conversation – really liked the film but refuted Quentin Tarantino’s interpretation of her song ‘Like a Virgin’. She gave him a copy of her ‘Erotica’ album, signed “To Quentin. It’s not about dick, it’s about love. Madonna.”
• Quentin Tarantino wrote the first draft in three and a half weeks.
• Robert Kurtzman did the special make-up effects for free, on the condition that Quentin Tarantino write a script for From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) based on a story by Kurtzman.
• Quentin Tarantino was considering using “Ballroom Blitz” by Sweet as an alternate song for the “ear” scene, but went with Stealers Wheel ”Stuck in the Middle with You”.
• Quentin Tarantino had his debut, Reservoir Dogs (1992) the same year as Robert Rodriguez’s debut El mariachi (1992). Since then they have collaborated on numerous projects.
• The budget didn’t stretch to obtaining police assistance for traffic control so in the scene where Steve Buscemi forces a woman out of her car and drives off in it, he could only do so when the traffic lights were green.

When it comes to great movies, Reservoir Dogs should always make the list.