Analyzing Evil: Reservoir Dogs

hello everyone and welcome to the 164th episode of analyzing evil featuring the characters and themes of Reservoir Dogs well it's a brand new year and I thought that perhaps it was time that I introduce some brand new elements to the channel namely the appearance of yours truly The Man Behind the eye that has seldom been seen but please let me know what you think about this change down below there are a few directors who can claim that their debut films can be counted among the best they've ever made but for the masterful Quint Tarantino it's no surprise that his genius level film making became apparent from the get-go Reservoir Dogs is a hybrid who done at Heist film that revolutionized the crime Thriller genre and within its story we find intricate layers of Good and Evil that often has a second guessing who is and isn't the bad guy well in this video we're going to be examining all those layers so we can determine exactly where these men and their actions lie on the spectrum of morality and to start let's establish some things about these gentlemen that are fairly obvious but important to note when discussing the varying degrees of evil present in their characters aside from Mr orange here our undercover cop all of these men are violent criminals with criminal histories who are actively engaged in a criminal operation the robbery of diamonds from an insured jewelry store and that automatically assigns different levels of evil to their overall characters however there's something important that this film establishes for us in its very first scene that we need to discuss the fact that if you didn't know beforehand that these men were criminals you'd likely never know that they were just by looking at them this notion is true for anybody really as a cleancut man wearing cargo shorts and a polo shirt could be a mass murderer and a man with face tattoos and a red handkerchief hanging out of his back pocket might be a charity worker with a runny nose you never really know and it's best that you never judge a book by its cover even if that cover could possibly give you some indication of what you'll find under the surface though that might be the case in this scene we are shown a couple of things about their characters that are less than desirable they're all casually racist and they're quite vulgar but outside of their racism and vulgarity if this film had only consisted of this one scene we might have thought these guys were just your average businessmen of some sort having breakfast together yes their racist jokes and epithets aren't okay and their vulgarity May bother some more than others but overall in this moment they appear to us as a gaggle of Macho men acting how you unfortunately might expect them to act and again not okay and you could call them bad guys due to the aforementioned racism but at this point in time there's no indication that these men are evil now the point of making these observations isn't to absolve these men of their sins by pointing out that if you take away the crimes they commit they're just a bunch of Average Joe's with some less than desirable characteristics and attitudes but to highlight the fact that anyone you meet can potentially be a violent career criminal and that they aren't so different from you or me the main difference between average law-abiding citizens and violent career criminals is of course the fact that these people are committing crimes and we aren't but when you dig deeper into how they came to be violent career criminals you'll often find that they developed into such people due to their exposure to a variety of negative upbringings and influences both environmental and personal influences that you and I were either fortunate enough not to experience or that we did experience but for a number of reasons they didn't drive us to become violent criminals there are exceptions of course but violent criminals who are committing their crimes for monetary gain typically do not come from privileged backgrounds and typically if a violent criminal did experience a comfortable and well adjusted upbringing you'll often find them to be the children of are relatives of violent criminals like nice guy edti aside from a rough upbringing though there is another path that could lead someone to becoming such a criminal which is experiencing some sort of hardship as for example even the wealthiest person can possibly be driven to commit armed robbery if they lose everything they have so in other words it's often desperation or your environment and upbringing that dictates whether or not you'll choose to pursue this path now you'll notice that I said violent criminals committing crimes for monetary gain are often formed in these ways and that's an important distinction to make for violent crime isn't solely the domain of the less fortunate the despondent or the relatives of criminals as there are plenty of people from all walks of life who commit violent crimes against others for hundreds of different reasons also making the distinction between violent and nonviolent crimes is also important here as there are plenty of people who commit non-violent crimes who never experienced any sort of hardship but here we're specifically talking about violent criminals who commit crimes to make a living and anything I say related to these type of criminals specifically could potentially be applied to other types but shouldn't be without evaluating them separately so yes Criminal of this nature do often look or act like you and I would and they've experienced a lot of the same things as your average citizen but there's those extra negative aspects of their respective lives that have caused them to rationalize that committing acts of evil is the answer to their monetary issues or Ambitions in this case we don't know what these things are but I imagine that all of these men have experienced some sort of hardship that led them to sitting at this table with one another now when people decide to become criminals especially professional criminals they all knowingly or unknowingly sign the same contract the one that stipulates the rules of the criminal game when one plays the criminal game there are several hazards to committing crimes that you have to accept you can be arrested and sentenced to jail or prison time you can be shot and killed by other criminals depending on the types of crimes you're committing you can be injured or killed by the people you're committing crimes against and of course you have to deal with various types of law enforcement looking to apprehend or eliminate you if necessary for the most part there isn't a single criminal committing crimes who doesn't understand these risks and the fact that this concept exists add some caveats to criminal behaviors that we need to keep in mind when we're examining them now no matter what the different layers to criminality are unless we're talking about extreme circumstances like wartime crimes committed by civilians for the sake of survival at any cost it's never a good thing to be a criminal but it's an it is what it is type of situation that isn't likely to change anytime soon likewise as far as criminals killing other criminals and criminals being pursued and apprehended by police is concerned it's also an all as fair and Love and War type of situation when criminals kill criminals for criminal reasons it's not right but it's nowhere near the realm of tragedy of inflicting crimes on Innocents it's still tragic that the world we live in bre men and women who go on to harm others no matter who they are but when a gangster kills another gangster in a Turf War for example both parties are to blame here for their pursu of this lifestyle whereas when an innocent suffers at the hands of a criminal it's a one-sided Affair that we can blame the criminal in question for when cops arrest criminals it's certainly not fun for the criminal but you can't really blame a police officer for doing their job you can call cops any horrid thing you can imagine for trying to stop you from committing violent crimes and cops certainly deserve to be scrutinized and called out for multiple different things but this isn't one of them because at the end of the day cops or no cops there's always going to be someone trying to stop you from committing violent crimes whether that's the people you're committing violent crimes against or the people around them as most people don't particularly enjoy when crimes are committed against them go figure in this film though we are given an instance of criminals killing other criminals it's not exactly what you traditionally expect to see as Criminal on criminal violence committed whilst playing the criminal game and we'll get to that a bit later but what we do see is a struggle between criminals and law enforcement looking to apprehend our criminal protagonists now as I mentioned earlier cops arresting criminals is a part of the game if you as a criminal bought your crime and you get caught well then you've lost the game and that's fair if your operation is exposed by an undercover cop that's also fair game what isn't fair is when you murder those police officers and of course most people don't want to give up without a fight or let a mole live in their organization and it's quite difficult for anyone to just lay down their guns and surrender if they can see a path to Freedom through a reign of bullets but that doesn't make it right or even acceptable why a cop arresting a criminal is perfectly fine is because again they're doing their job and they aren't killing the violent criminal in question they're just arresting them so the courts can then pass judgment on their crimes attempted arrest does not warrant murder and there is no justification for any criminal attempting to shoot their way out of prison time and that's where we find one of the problems with the criminal Endeavor this group of men engage in during this film robbing a jewelry store when they're insured might not seem like too horrid of a thing to do and it's definitely not the worst crime you can commit if you do so without harming anyone but there in lies the problem armed robberies inherently have a heightened chance of violence occurring and it's not necessarily the crime that poses the greatest threat to the safety and well-being of others but the potential ramifications and risks associated with committing that crime and here those risks are found in the potential loss of life of innocence and law enforcement should your robbery not go according to plan which is what happens here because Mr orange was an undercover cop this robbery was compromised from the get-go and while they had no intention of their crime being uncovered by an undercover officer that's just one of the potential risks of playing the criminal game therefore the loss of life of several Innocents and officers in this scenario is wholly unjustified even more so when you consider the six Innocents that died in the process the five people Mr blond Mur murdered during the robbery and the woman Mr White murdered when he and Mr orange were stealing her car here's the thing though as heinous as their crimes are the villainy we can assign to the criminals committing them is entirely dependent on how they conduct themselves and the actions they take prior to during and after the crimes they commit and this situation is no different to drive this point home let's make a comparison between Mr blonde and Mr Pink and Mr White three criminals who are doing the same job but three criminals who are also very different people now will Mr Pink and Mr White kill people absolutely if it's prison or murder they're going to choose murder but do they want to kill anybody no they'll only do so if they have to in order to survive or stay out of prison which isn't a good thing as killing someone because you were committing a crime to save yourself from the repercussions of committing that crime is never a good thing but at the end of the day their reasons for committing such an evil act are not born out of a specific desire to do that evil act or to cause other people misery misery is a byproduct of what they do not the main objective and even when they're robbing people they're never reving in the terror they're going to cause their victims or getting high off the thought of the tears they'll shed once they've stolen their belongings they're only trying to make it big by engaging in evil acts and when engaging in those acts they actively try to limit as much damage to others as they possibly can Mr blonde on the other hand is a man who would kill the clerk at a convenience store if he gave him the wrong change and he wouldn't be killing the clerk because he did something wrong but because he gave him the slightest reason to experience one of his Supreme Pleasures in life taking the life of another person in the film were given two separate instances of Mr blonde's pension for want and violence his murder of several people during the robbery and his torture of Officer Marvin Nash Mr blonde's reasoning for executing people during the robbery is their refusal to follow his order of not tripping the alarm and so therefore they deserve to die for it not only is that extremely poor logic but from what we know of Mr blonde's next expression of violence that was probably only an excuse to kill like I mentioned a moment ago when Mr blonde tortures Marvin he doesn't just display sadism he fully admits to enjoying the act of torturing a person and there is no scenario where you can argue that a person taking joy in the suffering of Innocence isn't an evil person taking pleasure in committing evil acts isn't a pre requisite to label someone an evil person but a person's motivation for committing an evil act certainly is and taking pleasure in enacting violence upon others is one of the more horrendous motivations a person can have that allows us to label them as evil being this kind of aus certainly confirms that Mr blonde is a psychopath with a distinct lack of empathy but another example we can use to highlight how horrid of a person Mr blonde is is the empathy and compassion that Mr White displays towards Mr orange after he's been shot Mr White does all that he can to try and comfort Mr orange as he's dying in his arms encouraging him taking care of of him and even holding him in his arms so he doesn't have to pass on cold alone and Afraid these are not the actions of a cruel and heartless man but a man who understands and sympathizes with the suffering of his fellow man a man who acts accordingly to lessen that suffering in any way that he can though to be fair he did kill Mr orange after he discovered his treachery but this was an extenda circumstance that was born more so out of emotion than anything it's still not right and Mr White would have likely agreed to kill him and he found out he was a rat before this moment and while this might lessen his capacity for mercy and compassion it doesn't doesn't erase the empathy he clearly displayed for this man prior to this moment now replace Mr White with Mr blonde in this situation and you're met with a very different outcome if Mr blonde had been with Mr orange when he was shot I have no doubt that he'd stick his finger in his wound and twisted before he kicked him in the head and left him on the side of the road to die now as far as the murders these three men have committed all three of these men would deserve life in prison for murdering people however when you examine the details of what landed them that sentence you find yourselves faced with two men filled with regret and guilt who could potentially reform themselves in a number of ways and a man who deserves nothing less than to be buried underneath that prison as far as the other active participants of this Caper are concerned we're never really given too much information about either Mr Blue or Mr Brown so for all we know they could be as psychotic as Mr blonde but it's more likely that their characters are closer in nature to that of Mr White and Mr Pink being a career criminal is a bad thing it's evil but the really sick and twisted criminals like Mr blonde are the exception not the rule and most criminals of this type are not committing crimes specifically to seow evil in the world but to profit from Evil so they might make their lives better at the expense of any anyone who happens to cross their path warped Ambitions that people develop for a number of different reasons as we discussed earlier but Ambitions that nonetheless don't necessarily condemn a person as an inherently evil individual there's still men who either injured or took the lives of several Innocents because of their poor decision-making and those injuries never quite heal nor do the absence of those lives ever hurt any less for the victim's loved ones but at least these men didn't want to hurt these people they did so because they felt forced into doing it and this very important distinction is what allows us to differentiate a man committing misguided and reluctant evil acts from an evil man who ful Embraces the evil they're committing now depending on your point of view it doesn't matter who they are or what they did Evil is evil and that makes them an evil person but I would feel perfectly safe and comfortable being alone in a room with Mr Pink or Mr White whereas I would break all my nails off scratching at the door to get away from Mr blonde as fast as I could and that's an important distinction that I believe should always be taken into account when judging a person and their actions now there are two other criminals featured in this story that we've yet to discuss Joe and his son Eddie Joe and Eddie have a much greater influence over Criminal operations than their employees and therefore they have a greater chance at having committed exponentially more deplorable acts in the past but just like with the men we've already discussed we're not going to speculate on any unknown actions they may have taken but on what we can prove Joe and Eddie like the rest of this crew are amiable and relatable in several ways and if it weren't for one glaring flaw in their characters we might even be able to judge them in the same way we judge Mr White and Mr Pink but one of the most egregious things people like Joe and Eddie do is allowing men like Vic Vega to work for them despite their extraordinarily violent tendency in fact that's typically the primary reason they do employ them which is horrific it's implied that Joe and Eddie have a more personal relationship with Vic which could be a factor as well but the fact that men in charge like Joe and Eddie are willing to employ animals like Vic and potentially risk the lives of Innocents also they can become richer is a component of their characters that makes them evil men who are enabling evil rather than men who are committing evil acts as who knows what else they have going on in their organization if Mr blonde is one of their prized employees and if a boss employs such a rotten person then the boss is r broughten too now crime does pay sometimes if you're clever or lucky enough and there are career criminals out there who live long lives and die surrounded by riches and loved ones but they are the exception as if you commit yourself to a life of crime your story is more likely to end in prison time or death and for the men of this story most of them were served up the ladder after several hours of confusion and Chaos were shown men in turmoil comrades and crime who are being thrown into disarray by the subersive elements among their ranks who have now devolved to a point of Madness that has them turning their guns upon each other and they all appropriately meet their ends at the hands of their former partners or law enforcement now including the perpetrators a total of 17 people lose their lives as a result of this robbery some who deserved it and some who didn't but when all is said and done who came out on top here well if he got away with the diamonds then Mr Pink certainly did and the reason he was even able to get out of this situation was because he was shown throughout the film to be one of the more reasonable and level-headed individuals involved in this operation which allowed him to come out the other side of this endeavor with his life intact however we don't know whether or not he was apprehended and if that's the the case then there were no real winners here so was one man's possible enrichment at the conclusion of this tale worth the lives of 17 people not at all the men who committed these crimes at some point in their lives made a conscious choice to pursue a life of crime that ended up leading them to this point and had they not chosen to take this path they could have saved themselves and multiple innocent people from having to suffer untimely deaths was the crime they aimed to commit a relatively inoffensive one in some ways yes but as I said earlier in this video it's not necessarily the crime that causes the biggest problem but everything surrounding it and aside from the crimes themselves the greatest downside to taking criminal action are these unknown tragedies that could occur at any second whilst you're engaged in these activities and though some of these men are worse than the others not a single one of them deserve to come out the other side of the situation free and happy men for all must suffer the consequences of their actions and if you let Darkness decide the direction your life will take chances are you'll find yourself staring into the eyes of the evil you created as death welcomes you with open arms thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and I hope you enjoyed what what are your thoughts on Reservoir Dogs in this new video format let me know down below and be sure to leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured in a future episode while you're at it if you like this video hit that thumbs up button and make sure to subscribe if you haven't already a big thank you to all of my subscribers my patrons and to anyone who's decided to honor me with a super thank and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen [Music] now join the Channel's Discord server and subreddit to interact with myself and the community and follow me on the social media platforms listed down below to keep up with the channel as always thanks for watching and I'll be seeing you soon

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 159,098

Keywords: horror, evil, villain

Id: fW5-OP4BK7M

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2024