Mr. Blue: The real-life criminal in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’
Setting out his stall to upend cinematic conventions from day one, Quentin Tarantino‘s classic debut feature Reservoir Dogs is famously a heist movie that doesn’t even show the heist.
Not that it matters, when the ever-shifting allegiances and fracturing interpersonal dynamics are what gives the movie its edge, from the opening exchange at the diner where the dialogue flows like fine wine to the climactic Mexican standoff that leaves barely a soul alive.
As an untried and untested filmmaker, the casting process would have been a lot trickier for Tarantino had he not found an early and vocal supporter in Harvey Keitel, who boarded Reservoir Dogs both as Mr. White and as a co-producer, which immediately lent the production an air of added legitimacy.
From there, the pieces continued falling into place as Tarantino began rounding up his colour-coded ensemble, with Tim Roth making one of his first major appearances in an American movie as Mr. Orange, where he’d be joined by Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi’s Mr. Pink, Tarantino’s Mr. Brown, and Edward Bunker’s Mr. Blue, all in the employ of Lawrence Tierney’s Eddie Cabot and his son, Chris Penn’s ‘Nice Guy’ Eddie.
Method acting doesn’t really apply to the crime genre unless performers want to get themselves arrested for seeing if they can really pull off a daring robbery, but Bunker was the solitary member of the Reservoir Dogs ensemble who knew exactly what it was like to operate on the wrong side of the law.
At the age of only 17, Bunker secured the infamous distinction of being the youngest inmate ever sentenced to serve time at San Quentin prison, but even after his release, he refused to turn his back on a life of crime, with several of his misdeeds evocative of Reservoir Dogs in one way or another.
Essentially a real-life Joe Cabot of sorts, Bunker would plan and orchestrate various robberies without being an active participant, while cheque forgery and extortion also became regular pursuits. He escaped from a low-security facility and was incarcerated again after being apprehended following a failed bank job and high-speed vehicular pursuit before being declared criminally insane by falsifying a suicide attempt and claiming the Catholic Church had put a radio in his head.
In the 1970s, he oversaw a drug-dealing operation in San Francisco and was arrested yet again after the police placed a tracking device on his car, where he promptly led them directly to an intended bank robbery. Obviously, he ended up turning his life around and even became a well-known author, Hollywood screenwriter, and occasional actor, with his real-life experiences coming in very handy when it came to his extra-curricular pursuits that finally placed him on a straight and narrow path of legality.
Understandably, he had plenty to say about the way Tarantino depicted the before, during, and after of Reservoir Dogs‘ diamond thievery, going so far as to brand the opening scene as “ridiculous” because in his learned view, there was no way a group of identically-clad criminals would so brazenly gather together just to shoot the shit before embarking on a dangerous robbery.
Of course, Tarantino’s films have always dwelled in a reality that exists just beyond the one he lives in, with Bunker leaving his misgivings at the door and embracing the fact it wasn’t supposed to be a grounded, gritty, and realistic story ripped straight from the headlines and transplanted to the screen.
Still, if the writer and director ever wanted some authentic knowledge on how things could have gone down, then Bunker was right there to offer his insights and expertise, which he gathered from his own decades-long stint as a repeat offender. He put it all behind him in the end, but in terms of getting the inside track on how to pull off a daylight heist, Reservoir Dogs cast the perfect person to offer specifics that not even the most talented and imaginative screenwriters in the business could have conjured.
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