Reservoir Dogs Textual Analysis

This film starts with showing a black screen with gold writing showing the production company and the producer, the dialogue comes in with one of the characters talking about one of Madonna’s song like a virgin. The shot cuts to a pan around the table of all the main characters discussing this song, using the darkness of the back of their suits to mask the cuts in the shots. They are all sat in an all American diner with all the characters eating and drinking coffee and many of them smoking. All of them are engaged in the conversation apart from one who is reading an address book out loud to himself.

All of the characters are wearing suits apart from 2 who are wearing normal clothes, we instantly know who the characters to focus on are, they look professional and we know that they part of a group or gang who are planning on doing something together, so far we don’t know what that is, it could be anything. From the characters involved in the conversation we can guess that it is not on the up and up.

The scene that they are in is a diner which all the characters that are shown, it is a small place there are only a few other characters there who are ignored and not mentioned or shown much, these people are sitting by the back door of this diner in a corner so they would not be disturbed or over heard if they did talk about some sort of job they might talk about.

The start of this film is not like a classic heist film because they have not even mentioned the job or what is going on, for the first 2 minutes of the film. Someone who is watching this without knowing what it’s about would not know what these people are doing or why their doing it.


The sound effects in this scene are very overemphasized such as the sound of the coffee being poured, clinking of the mugs and knives on plates. These sounds may be heightened because Tarantino wanted to make it sure that it was clear the characters were in a quiet place where it would be easy to hear these sorts of sounds so it is believable to the viewer.


There is no music in this particular scene, this again may be to highlight that it is a quiet place and the conversation they are having could be heard throughout the coffee bar. In the whole scene it is all digetic sound and no non digetic. 

The mood of this scene suggests that they are getting brekfast before this group of men get ready to do something but we dont know what is could be. Suggested by the type of  people the characters seem to be it is probably something that isnt socially acceptable, the director wants us to read these people like a book and judge them accordingly.