Review of True Romance (1993) by Cameron J — 14 Apr 2015

It's hard to watch "True Romance", based on an early Tarantino script, and not compare it slightly unfavorably with the films he would personally go on to direct from his own scripts, but really, Tony Scott did a pretty great job with the script, and while it's no "Pulp Fiction", "True Romance" is an electric action-comedy-drama, full of cracking performances and Tarantino's signature pop-culture-laden dialogue and ridiculous - and ridiculous bloody - action sequences.

What a cast this film has, though! There are so many intricacies to all the great performances, but it's better to just list them with a basic description, because there are so many awesome actors on show here that I couldn't possibly talk about all of them in a concise manner. In the center we have Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette as a comic book store cashier Clarence and the call girl, Alabama, he marries, respectively, who find themselves on the run after he kills her ex-pimp (Gary Oldman) out of pure spite (well, it was kinda self-defense). The murder isn't really the reason they have to go on the run; Clarence accidentally grabbed a bag full of uncut cocaine when he meant to grab Alabama's belongings, and now the drug lord, Vincenzo, played by Christopher Walken, wants his coke back. First he tortures Clarence's dad (Dennis Hopper, in my personal favorite performance in the film), and then he sends a goon, Virgil, played by James Gandolfini, to Los Angeles to find them.

But the cast doesn't stop there; we're not even half-way yet. Also important are Dick (Michael Rapaport), an actor friend of Clarence's, and Elliot Blitzer (Bronson Pinchot), a friend of Dick's who agrees to help Clarence sell the coke to big-time producer Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek). Then there's Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore as two cops who attempt to catch Donowitz making the drug deal, and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis Presley, a phantom that hangs over Clarence's shoulder in certain scenes to provide advice. To top it all off, there are some great minor roles played by Samuel L. Jackson, only really in a cameo here as a friend of Alabama's pimp, Brad Pitt, who plays Dick's stoner roommate, and Eric Allan Kramer - the goddamn dad from "Good Luck Charlie" - as one of Donowitz' bodyguards. Seriously, that guy has not aged in 20 years. And I include his balding hairstyle in that.

That astounding cast - and I'm only scratching the surface as there are tons of other great one- or two-line characters who steal their scenes - is the main reason to watch "True Romance", though anyone who's a fan of Tarantino's dialogue-and-death style will have a whale of a time here as always. The editing and cinematography aren't quite as hyper-stylized as in Tarantino's own films, but Tony Scott did a solid job of turning yet another masterful QT script into an excellent movie.

"True Romance" is a brutal, witty, and ridiculous thriller, with quite a few elements that I found to be totally stupid. Fortunately, that's kind of the point. Why should the characters we're rooting for be logical, when we're rooting for murders and other kinds of criminals in the first place? It's for our benefit as the audience that they make stupid decisions (yes, half of this bollocks could've been avoided had the characters made better choices, and I'm not just talking about NOT murdering or stealing, but they way they react to those situations), because those stupid decisions lead them into even stupider action sequences, which are yet more excuses to see some of the best actors of our day have a blast beating and shooting each other up in the bloodiest fashion possible. It's a phenomenal experience.