Quentin Tarantino plays Mr. Brown and Edward Bunker plays Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs. Both are part of the crew of robbers hired by Joe Cabot. They are present at the opening breakfast, 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 heist's failure because the gang can no longer account for all the men it started with.
The film provides different information about each one. Brown appears 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: there is a visible action to follow in Brown's case and news relayed within the group in Blue's.
Mr. Brown: from breakfast to the getaway car
Brown opens the diner conversation with his sexual interpretation of the song Like a Virgin. He talks at length and gets replies that challenge what he is saying. His first exchange identifies him by the way he occupies the conversation: he insists on his reading and tries to get the others to go along with it. At that moment, the group can spend time on a disagreement that still does not require deciding the fate of a partner.
Tarantino plays one of those participants, in addition to writing and directing the film, as noted in the 2023 Lumière Festival listing. Within the cast of Reservoir Dogs, his character has a brief role. The attention he gets while speaking at breakfast does not make him the organizer of the heist. Joe remains the one who hires the group and sets the terms of the job. Brown takes part in a conversation among associates, without holding command of the operation.
Later, the film returns to the getaway to show him driving a car with White and Orange. Brown is wounded and bleeding; he can no longer keep 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 on screen, even though the shot that caused it is not shown. For that reason, what happens to him during the getaway can be described without identifying a specific shooter. His role as driver is cut short by the injury he has received. The character who had been recognized speaking among the others appears again when he is already having trouble completing the task on which his partners depend.
Mr. Blue: an absence that Joe explains
Blue takes part much less in the breakfast conversation. His presence places him within the group before the heist, without giving him a personal backstory or a command 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 an earlier story 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 for the others. When Joe arrives, he says that Blue is dead. That information comes from a conversation after the heist; the film does not go back to show a confrontation involving Blue. It also does not offer a scene in which we can follow his last 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 partner who might show up at the meet-up 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 can be associated with the role by which many readers know him, but the personal experiences he recounts do not become background for the robber in Reservoir Dogs. The film does not use that book as an explanation of Blue's past.
The distinction between actor and character also applies to Brown. Tarantino wrote the screenplay and speaks his lines on screen, but the opinion about a song appears inside a fictional conversation, with an interlocutor trying to persuade the others. Reading it as the director's personal statement would require a different attribution. In both cases, recognizing the performer provides identification; the character's behavior still depends on what the film allows him to say and do.