ABSTRACT
In the Quentin Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs, Freddy is an undercover cop who infiltrates a bunch of robbers. In the getaway from the botched robbery, he is shot and spends most of the film bleeding profusely lying on a warehouse floor. The film tells the story of how the robbers come to be in the warehouse largely through flashbacks. It is in flashback that we discover that Freddy is an undercover cop. We also see how he learnt to go undercover. In one scene, his police colleague Holdaway is teaching Freddy how to make his cover story convincing. Central to this is providing sufficient detail. He is given a script about an event in the men’s room that he has to learn. This includes the detail of whether the stalls had doors and whether there were towels or a blower for drying hands. Freddy complains about how much detail he needs to learn to play the part of a crook convincingly. For Holdaway, it is only through mastering the details that Freddy will be able to sell his story to the other members of the gang. In the film, as well as seeing Freddy complain about learning the details of his cover stories, we see him tell them to the gang and they are convinced. It is only at the end of the film that Freddy tells another member of the gang that he is a cop, and he is shot.
