The Opening Scene Of Reservoir Dogs & Character Development

Quintin Tarantino’s date film Reservoir Dogs set a new bar in film making and put Tarantino’s name on the marquee. It’s about a botched diamond heist and one of the crooks is an undercover cop. None of the thieves use their real name, but are given names of color, such as Mr. Blue and Mr. White. The only characters whose names we know are boss, Joe Cabot, and his son, “Nice Guy” Eddie. The names of a few thieves pop out in the story, but I’ll stick to the color names.

After seeing it several times, I noticed that the opening scene paints the characters in clear terms. It is worth a study for Creative Writers so they can learn how to draw their characters cleanly and clearly from the start, even if it’s in a scene that really has nothing to do with the actual story, like breakfast a diner before the attempted heist. I’m going to look at each character in this opening scene and show how Tarantino draws in narrow terms that show their personality and temperament. I’m only going to stick to characters that survive the initial shootout with the cops.

• Joe Cabot – During breakfast, Joe has an old address book that he hasn’t used “in a coon’s age.” He’s trying to remember one name, Toby. His failure to identify this person in the book portends his inability to identify the rat in his house.
• Nice Guy Eddie – Eddie talks about the song, “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.” He had heard it recently on the radio. He never realized that the singer was the killer. This shows us that he’s not too bright.
• Mr. White – Mr. White takes the book from Joe when he gets tired of hearing him drone on and on about Toby. He says he’ll give it back after breakfast, but threatens to keep it. It’s all done in humor, but no one could get away with that unless they were close to the boss. More than anything else, we see his relationship with Joe in this scene.
• Mr. Orange – Mr. Orange is the undercover cop. He “rats out” Mr. Pink for not leaving a tip. He says less than anyone else, but his persona is writ large by this simple exchange.
• Mr. Blond – Mr. Blond offers to shoot Mr. White if he doesn’t give the book back to Joe. He ever shots him with a finger gun. Mr. Blond is the most violent and starts all of the shooting in the botched heist. We see his trigger-happy nature even at breakfast.
• Mr. Pink – Mr. Pink doesn’t believe in tipping. He has very clear rules for how he runs his life, especially when it comes to money. He claims always to be the one acting like a professional. He does this when other people are not living up to what he thinks the rules are for crooks.

This movie does have strong language, even in this breakfast scene. If that matters to you, I suggest you see it on cable where they edit out a lot of the foul language. I personally think profanity only comes from a lazy mind. Tarantino was cutting shortcut by having his characters swear. Still, he made a compelling movie and painted some wonderful pictures in the opening scene of what his characters are like, and then gave them interesting things to do after that.