By Jason Haskins
I’ve never been a fan of romances, but with True Romance you have a romantic movie for the whole family—action for dad, romance for mom, and plenty of fucks flung around for the kids.
True Romance revolves around Clarence and Alabama Whirly. One day while Clarence is celebrating his birthday by watching a triple feature kung-fu (Editor's Note- The Street Fighter Trilogy is Karate) movie at a theatre. In the theater, Clarence stumbles upon (or the other way around) Alabama and they go out on a date which leads to love at first sight. After declarations of devotion, she admits that she’s a call girl (“You’re a whore??”), but follows with the fact that she loves him. All in one night. Clarence himself has fallen helplessly in love with her, so he goes to her pimp’s place to pick up her stuff, where he accidentally picks up a suitcase full of cocaine, mistaking it full of clothes.
As you might imagine, the pimp’s business partners aren’t very happy about this and so begins a hunt for the Whirly’s. After a road trip the Whirly's land in Los Angeles hoping to sell the contraband to one of the many movie stars in the area. Little do they know that powerful mob felons are hunting for them and that the police are also after them after one of their associates gets busted with coke. What will these two turtledoves do? Will they give back the coke or keep evading the bad guys?
The story was written by none other than Quentin Tarantino and was one of his first completed scripts that were adapted into a movie. What’s disappointing is that while he wrote the script he didn’t direct it. In his place was Tony Scott (of Top Gun and Crimson Tide fame). Aside from that, all of Tarantino’s signatures are intact. The plot is entirely character driven with dialogue that is some of the most realistic stuff ever conjured up, but isn’t as witty like Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown.
At the helm of the movie is Interview With The Vampire and Hard Rain star Christian Slater. While I’ve never been a huge fan of him, he supplies a masterful performance in True Romance with a quirky appeal and some of the most powerful screaming-and-holding-a-gun scenes I’ve ever seen. As for his counterpart you have stunted-front-teeth star Patricia Arquette of Holes and Nowhere To Run. I don’t know what it is, but I find her repulsive. Her bulbous chesty cleavage is shown far too often and her acting is stale and shallow. She was a little underwritten even though she’s onscreen for 95% of the movie.
This duo makes a Bonnie and Clyde/Thelma and Louise-type of vibe come through their work. I think this was intentional, much as all of Tarantino's are on some level homages of older films. Also featured in the movie is an all star cast. Dennis Hopper plays Clarence’s father, but sadly is only in the movie a little bit. Christopher Walken is also in the movie, alongside Hopper. The bummer is that these guys are only in the movie for a few small parts. Also making appearances are Brad Pitt, who plays a pothead, Val Kilmer who speaks the voice of Elvis (Clarence is obsessed with him and has hallucinations), Gary Oldman as a pimp, and even Samuel L. Jackson with a small role.
The movie is blisteringly fast and keeps a good pace, but an aspect of the film that will have audiences loving it even more is the violence. You have guys beating the crap out of each other, corkscrews stabbing guys, Hong Kong-style gun fights, and you can pretty much guess that buckets of blood is spilled throughout the length of the movie. It’s done pretty much gratuitously, but rad nonetheless. The movie is more intense than sickeningly gory. All of the gunfights and fighting really keeps you on edge, no matter how unrealistic some of it is (when will movie stars ever reload while mowing down bad guys?).
True Romance is more of a cult classic than a mainstream movie. Personally I loved it a lot and consider it one of my favorite movies despite Patricia Arquette. If you’re a Quentin Tarantino lover like me who owns all of his movies (even The Four Rooms and From Dusk Till Dawn then you owe it to yourself to see this movie. While it’s not his best by any means, all of the collaborating efforts that went into this movie are clearly seen and I appreciate them. The whole love at first sight is sort of unbelievable, but when I first saw this movie I loved it and I still do at this day. Believe you me; you will be doing a deed when you see this flick.
4 out of 5 stars
Rating System (out of 5)
Acting - 3.5
Direction - 4
Script - 4
Cinematography - 4
Editing - 3.5
Overall - 4
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