True Romance

In Detroit, comic book store clerk Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) falls for hooker Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) who was hired by his boss as a birthday present. They get marry. He kills her pimp. They steal his cocaine. That's when things start to go wrong.

Tony Scott directs this violent outrageous movie, but it's Quentin Tarantino's dialogue that makes it stands out. Coming after 'Reservoir Dogs', Quentin was still an unknown quantity. I loved the wild dialog but didn't know anything about Quentin when I first saw this. Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper have a crazy exchange. I remember sitting up and taking notice like a new voice has come to American cinema. It's years later when I noticed Tarantino's name as the writer and it all makes sense. A name is given to the voice. Would you do Elvis if your life depended on it?

Have to give this 10/10 because it's still my Number one film now after having first seen it nearly twenty years ago. I love every second of it. From the dialogue to the stellar cast and everything in between. It just feels like my movie and I think it always will be.

True Romance is a celebration of film. It wallows in every possible seedy contrivance of American crime/action cinema. It is absolutely shameless in its exploitation of excessive violence, over-acting, melodrama, lurid sex, and rampant drug use...I love it. Quentin Tarantino, as I'm sure everyone knows, wrote the story, but it is the in execution that this film pays off. The cast, oh the cast: The lynchpins are Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette. They both give solid performances, which prevents the film from flying off the tracks; they serve as the pilot light. The supporting roles are the gas. The Walken/Hopper show down has been oft sighted as the film's best aspect, and this is, arguably, true. Just watch this scene and then watch it again. Sparks actually shoot out of the screen and burn people about the head and shoulders. OK, you've got Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis, Brad Pitt as a disgruntled pot-smoking loser, Tom Sizemore & Chris Penn as cops, James Gandolfini (pre-Sopranos) as a reflective hitman, and you've even got Bronson Pinchot (from TV's PERFECT STRANGERS) for God's sake. Did I forget Gary Oldman? Do yourself a favor and rent every single Gary Oldman related project (they're not all good films, but...). Why is Gary Oldman not in every film ever made? Why? I ask you why? He has got to be the best actor working today, hands down. As Drexel Spivey, Oldman chews the scenery, digests it, and then expels it from every orifice. Keep in mind that he is an English actor with a normal speaking voice at home in the Royal Shakespeare Company. His performance here is second only to his turn in LEON in blatant over-the-top insanity. Tony Scott, who along with his brother Ridley, has been known to over-direct a film or two, here chooses wisely to basically set up the camera and run. The score by Hans Zimmer adds a bouncy xylophone driven theme to the film and finds the right balance. This a well made, balls-to-the-wall, popcorn throwing, cult classic. In a market dominated with stereotypical characters, this movie avoids that trap by letting the stereotypes flourish with all the grotesque absurdity it can muster. 9/10

Cynical, seen-it-all-before smart ass that I am, I can't but help love 'True Romance'! On paper it looks like a sure fire recipe for disaster. A typically hip pop-culture saturated Quentin Tarantino script directed by schlockmeister Tony Scott, the man responsible for rancid Simpson/Bruckheimer "blockbusters" like 'Top Gun' and 'Days Of Thunder'. But some how it really works! The movie is especially helped by a dynamite cast, one of the most impressive in many years. Possibly only Julian Schnabel's underrated biopic 'Basquiat' can rival its mixture of star power and cult faves. Slater, Arquette, Walken, Hopper, Oldman, Kilmer, Penn, Sizemore, Jackson, Rapaport, Gandolfini, Argo, Corrigan, etc.etc. These are many of the finest actors working today. Add them to an electric story of love on the run, jam packed with amusing, highly quotable dialogue and plenty of action and laughs, and you have yourself a genuinely entertaining update of a classic 70s drive-in movie. 'True Romance' is a wild ride not to be missed!

Sometimes there are classics that one missed, even when almost everyone at the time watched them. This is one of them for me. How I didn't see this movie in the cinemas in the early 90s when I was going to the movies every week is a mystery to me, even moreso that I never saw it on VHS or TV, when it's a very famous film with some big names on both sides of the camera. Fortunately, I could rectify this mistake watching it last week in its new 4K HDR restored version projected on a big screen, and oh, boy! What a movie this one is! The 90s were the decade most obsessed with coolness since the 30s and few films lived up to be really cool then and even less now, but this early script by Tarantino and Avary (the wonderful couple) with the stylist direction of the superb Tony Scott, the brilliant soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and an unbelievable cast that throws big names without stop, not only in the leads but in every little role (including a young and powerful James Gandolfini), is one of the coolest movies of the decade and a truly deserving classic.