Reservoir Dogs By Quentin Tarantino: Film Analysis

Screenwriters enjoy creating their own jargon and Quentin Tarantino is no exception. He is one of the well-known screenwriters who uniquely builds their world through dialogue and subtly inserts themes to make the audience reflect on their own values. In Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the screenplay hopes to have the audience question the loyalty, morality, and self-interest of the characters. Tarantino accomplishes this through the dialogue, inciting incident, and climax. The dialogue indicates the loyalty of the criminals for the head mobster and how they are automatically expected to be loyal. Along with the inciting incident, morality is present between two characters and the decision to be morally right affects one of the characters. Self-interest

White is driving a stolen car while Mr. Orange is fearing for his life due to a gunshot wound to his stomach. The inciting incident is clear because earlier in the story, there was no commotion amongst the men during breakfast. Suddenly being thrown into a chaotic scene indicated the change of tone from low intensity to high intensity. Although the audience does not understand the scene at first, they later understand that the relationship between Mr. White and Mr. Orange influences the interaction the characters have in the car. As the audience later learned in the screenplay, the men are fleeing from a robbery at a jewelry store, and have stolen a vehicle from the civilian who shot Mr. Orange. Mr. White could have left Mr. Orange to bleed to death on the side of the road and fled without a second thought, but was sympathetic and brought Mr. Orange with him. Mr. White morally did not leave Mr. Orange behind because the audience learns later in the screenplay that Mr. White and Mr. Orange have created a father and son type relationship together. Mr. White could not bring himself to leave Mr. Orange due to him also taking the bullet and killing the previous car owner in order to escape the police. Opposite of the morally right decision Mr. White made by saving someone’s life, Mr. Orange makes an immoral decision that he cannot explain when he kills Mr. Blonde. Although Mr. Orange could not justify his actions to Joe, Eddie,

By creating a unique dialogue and using the dialogue to his advantage to subtly share the effects of loyalty, morality and self-interest, Tarantino accomplishes a well-written screenplay. The inciting incident and climax is clear to the audience, which allows the audience to dig deeper into the scene and absorb the underlying themes of loyalty, morality and self-interest. By utilizing the themes to his advantage, Tarantino was able to create a tragic crime drama of a heist gone wrong. The loyalty of the recruited robbers, coming to terms of morality, and depiction of self-interest assisted in creating a tragic turn of events, but a great