Quentin Tarantino plays Mr Brown and Edward Bunker plays Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs. Both belong to the gang of robbers hired by Joe Cabot. They are present at the opening breakfast scene, but their roles are less developed than those of White, Orange, Pink and Blonde, whose confrontations take up most of the warehouse story.
The brevity of their appearances does not make them outsiders to the job. Brown takes part in the getaway that follows the robbery; Blue is part of the group whose fate the survivors try to piece together. Their names come up in conversations about the robbery going wrong because the gang can no longer account for all the men it started with.
The film gives different information about each of them. Brown is seen wounded during the escape. Blue's death, by contrast, is known through what Joe says. That difference makes it possible to explain their fates without attributing scenes to them that do not exist: in Brown's case there is a visible action to follow, and in Blue's case a piece of news relayed within the group.
Mr Brown: from breakfast to the getaway car
Brown opens the café conversation with his sexual interpretation of the song Like a Virgin. He speaks at length and meets responses that challenge what he is saying. His first speech makes him recognisable through the way he takes over the conversation: he insists on his reading and tries to get the others to go along with it. At that point, the group can spend time on a disagreement that does not yet require anyone to decide about a companion's life.
Tarantino plays one of those participants, as well as writing and directing the film, as noted in the 2023 Lumière Festival listing. Within the Reservoir Dogs cast, his character has a brief appearance. The attention he gets while speaking at breakfast does not make him the mastermind of the robbery. Joe remains the one who hires the group and sets the terms of the job. Brown takes part in a conversation among colleagues, without taking command of the operation.
Later on, the film returns to the getaway to show him at the wheel of a car with White and Orange. Brown is injured and bleeding; he can no longer carry on driving normally. The emergency forces the other two to abandon that vehicle and continue on their own. The episode ends with Brown dead and leaves White and Orange looking for another way to escape.
The wound appears in the images, although the shot that caused it is not shown. That is why what happens to him during the escape can be described without identifying a specific shooter. His role as driver is cut short by the injury he has received. The character who was first recognised speaking among the others reappears when he is already struggling to complete the task on which his companions depend.
Mr Blue: an absence that explains Joe
Blue takes much less part in the breakfast conversation. His presence places him within the group before the robbery, without giving him a personal backstory or a leadership role. Bunker, also credited as Eddie Bunker in the Lumière listing, plays that part. The film offers few details to describe him individually: it does not develop a backstory that would let us reconstruct how he came to work with Joe or what he was doing before this operation.
After the robbery, Blue does not appear among those who gather in the warehouse. His absence leaves part of the outcome to be clarified by the others. When Joe arrives, he says that he is dead. The information comes from a conversation after the robbery; the film does not flash back to show an encounter led by Blue. Nor does it offer a scene in which we can follow his final movements.
Joe turns an absence into a confirmed loss for the others. His information changes what the group can expect: Blue is no longer a companion who might turn up at the meeting point.
The name Mr Blue also appears in Edward Bunker's autobiography published by No Exit Press in 1999. The publisher's listing identifies the book as the memoirs of the writer who played the character. Its subject is Bunker's life. The title may be associated with the role by which many readers know him, but the personal experiences he recounts do not become background to the robber in Reservoir Dogs. The film does not use that book as an explanation of Blue's past.
The distinction between performer and character also applies to Brown. Tarantino writes the screenplay and speaks his lines on screen, but the opinion about a song appears within a fictional conversation, with an interlocutor trying to persuade the others. Reading it as a personal statement by the director would require a different attribution. In both cases, recognising the person acting provides identification; the character's behaviour still depends on what the film allows him to say and do.