Review of True Romance (1993) by Ola G — 17 Aug 2015

Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) watches a Sonny Chiba triple feature at a Detroit movie theater on his birthday when he meets Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette). They go to a diner and flirt with each other. At Clarence's apartment they have sex. She confesses that she is a call girl hired by Clarence's boss as his birthday present. Each claims to have fallen in love and they marry and express their commitment with one another by getting tattoos. An apparition of Elvis Presley (Val Kilmer) tells Clarence that killing her pimp will make the world a better place. Clarence visits Alabama's pimp, Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), who makes Clarence uneasy. Clarence tells Drexl that he has married Alabama and she has no additional business with him. Drexl and Clarence fight, Clarence draws a gun and kills Drexl. He grabs a bag that he assumes contains Alabama's belongings (which in fact contains drugs that Drexl's peddling). Later Clarence and Alabama go to see Clarence's estranged father, Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper), a former cop. Clifford tells Clarence that the police assume Drexl's murder is a drug-related killing, and that the cocaine belonged to Irish mob boss "Blue Lou" Boyle. In Los Angeles, the young couple plan to meet Clarence's old friend, Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport), an aspiring actor. Back in Detroit, Clifford is confronted in his home by Don Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken), Boyle's consul in the Detroit Mafia, who wants the drugs taken from Drexl. Clifford refuses to reveal where his son has gone. Coccotti shoots Clifford in the head and then finds a note on the fridge giving Clarence's address in L.A...

Tony Scott´s (RIP) "True Romance" with a script filled with pop culture references from Quentin Tarantino is a violent ride with larger than life characters and with a hint of Bonnie and Clyde in Clarence and Alabama. When re-seeing it today it´s so very stylistically and aesthetically in the line of what became Tony Scott´s slightly over the top trademark of filmmaking. It´s a gritty, dynamic, bloody and amoral road movie with a large ensemble cast. It´s shameless in its exploitation of excessive violence and personally I wasn´t all that impressed when I re-saw it the other day. The fight between Alabama and Virgil is just too much to be honest. Despite the fact that we get solid performances from everyone involved (who will forget Gary Oldman´s Drexl) the storyline isn´t all that exciting nor logic in many ways and I reckon the film would´ve been far better off with the alternative ending as that would´ve fit the film much more. I reckon time has made me feel different about this sort of films and I have grown a tiredness of Tarantino´s ultra violence over time. At least when the story isn´t engaging and just seem to exploit violence. Compared to for example "Inglourious Basterds" which I still reckon as one of Tarantino´s best.