My Favorite Movie Moment

(Spoiler Warning for Reservoir Dogs.  Please do NOT read this until you have seen Reservoir Dogs.)

My favorite moment in a movie is a scene from one of my absolute favorite movies.  That movie is Reservoir Dogs.  The specific scene that I like more than any other is not the most well known one.  In fact, it immediately follows what most would consider to be the most well known scene in the movie, that scene being the one in which Mr. Blonde cuts off the cop’s ear to the tune of the song “Stuck in the Middle with You.”  I really like that scene, and to this day, I cannot hear that song without thinking of that specific scene and cringing just a little bit.

The scene that I like is the one that happens a little bit later.  Once Mr. Blonde cuts off the police officer’s ear and is preparing to burn him alive after soaking him in gasoline, Mr. Orange, who we’ve thought was unconscious, shoots Mr. Blonde killing him immediately.  This still is not my favorite moment.  After Mr. Blonde is shot and is dead, the rest of the remaining criminals come into the warehouse where all of this has taken place.  They see Mr. Blonde dead, and question Mr. Orange because he is the only one that could have shot him.  He confesses to what he’s done and explains that Mr. Blonde was going to burn the cop alive.  One of the criminals that has come back in and is now questioning Mr. Orange Nice Guy Eddie says, “Who, that cop?” and immediately shoots the earless, gas-soaked police officer.  That moment is my favorite in the movie, and at the time of writing, my favorite moment in film that I can think of.

The main reason that I love it so much is how many levels it works on and how many previous scenes we’ve seen that it plays off of.  To start off, we know that Mr. Orange is the rat within the group of jewelry store thieves, so we are already waiting to see the rest of the gang figure out who he is throughout the movie.  At this point, we see Nice Guy Eddie shoot this cop that Mr. Orange killed another man to save.  Regardless of him being an undercover cop, we are terrified for Mr. Orange because of what we now see that Eddie is capable of, and we can feel just how far in over his head Mr. Orange is.  We are scared because most of us feel that Mr. Orange made the right decision in shooting Mr. Blonde who was torturing and planning to kill in the most excruciating way available a man simply because of his occupation.  We feel like we might have made this same decision, and so we understand that Mr. Orange probably would have too if he was truly a criminal and not an undercover cop.  Knowing that he’s actually a cop and might be at serious risk of being killed for a completely unrelated reason just doubles the suspense.

Another reason is that we already understand the relationship between Nice Guy Eddie and Mr. Blonde and can relate to it also.  We know that Mr. Blonde had just gotten out of jail, and Eddie’s family was helping him to get his life back together.  We see them talk like old friends and wrestle like kids together when Mr. Blonde first goes to see them.  They are quite clearly very close, and this is only further nailed home by the scene.  We see Eddie immediately shoot the cop that Mr. Blonde was killed for.  We understand the emotions within Eddie.  We understand that Mr. Blonde has just become a part of his life again and has now been jerked right back away from him forever, and in response, Eddie is lashing out by killing part of what he blames for this loss.  He is getting revenge, but we know that his vendetta is not settled because the cop did not directly kill Mr. Blonde.  We know that that falls on Mr. Orange.  This allows the emotion that we understand is there within Eddie to be applied to Mr. Orange to make us more anxious to see what becomes of both of them.  Overall this is an excellently crafted scene and a great payoff for hours of build up that would  still keep the audience invested purely on its own merits without those that it builds off of from previous scenes.  That is what makes it my personal favorite movie moment.

Author: Jackson Palmer

Jackson Palmer is a student studying literature at the Mississippi School of the Arts. He hopes to use the education he obtains there to write novels, short stories, poetry, and scripts for movies, television, and theater productions. Additionally, he would like to write within a number of genres such as comedy, drama, horror, etc. Some of his favorite writers and influences include Billy Joel, John Steinbeck, and Dan Harmon. He hopes to explore concepts and systems of thought such as existentialism, nihilism, and fulfillment within his writing. He would like to thank you visiting his blog and hopefully reading his work. View all posts by Jackson Palmer