Reservoir Dogs (1992) is a genre film that takes a satiric look at its own genre, that of the caper film. The film is extremely violent, which for many viewers may hide the satiric thrust of the story and the way the interplay of characters involves a twisted sense of morality, the so-called "honor among thieves," that in this case becomes a palpable presence holding together a group of professional criminals who have nothing else to believe in except that they will be able to rely on each other. As the film unfolds, though, they find they can rely on nothing in a universe of random actions over which they have no control.
The story is deceptively simple: A group of small-time criminals are brought together by a man who has decided how a robbery is to be staged. The robbery itself occurs off-screen. The criminals hold up the bank, but one of them is actually an undercover policeman who sees to it that the police are waiting. The robbery therefore goes completely wrong, but the "arrest" also goes wrong when the undercover cop is accidentally shot. His criminal partner takes him back to the hideout to wait for the others and to find a doctor. When the boss shows up, he is convinced that they have been betrayed and that the man who is an undercover cop is the one who betrayed them. The undercover cop's criminal partner, not believing this, defends him and shoots down the boss, getting shot himself in the process. The undercover cop reveals the truth just as the police arrive, and his criminal partner shoots him and is in turn shot himself.
The plot of this film was taken from the ending of the Hong Kong film City on Fire (Ringo Lam, 1987), a film with a much more involved plot centering on the undercover cop and his growing friendship with the man he is investigating. The ending takes place in the hideout as the police assault begins, and the conflict works out in much the same way as in Reservoir Dogs in a more cursory...