Before he directed his debut film Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino sold his script for True Romance. It ended up in the hands of director Tony Scott (Top Gun, The Last Boy Scout).
The result?
The movie found some critical acclaim but did about break-even business.
But with time, the film has been re-appraised as a cult classic.
According to fans of the movie, Tarantino’s dark humor, pop cultural cues, and snappy dialogue intermesh with Scott’s stylized slow-motion action.
And I’d like to know the bait they used to lure actors into this movie. You’d need to rob a Leprechaun of his pot’ o gold to pay them today.
But even with all these trimmings, I wondered if this was a film for Tarantino and Scott fan clubs or one we should all plump down to witness.
So is True Romance a good movie?
The Plot of True Romance:
While attending a kung-fu triple feature for his birthday, comic book store employee and Elvis megafan Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) meets young Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette).
The two hit it off, hanging out after the movies and ending the night having sex in Clarence’s apartment.
Moved to tears, Alabama confesses that she is a call girl hired by Clarence’s boss.
But as the two discuss things, they realize that they are both, in fact, hopelessly in love. They are married at City Hall the next day.
After talking things over with a vision of Elvis (Val Kilmer), Clarence decides to confront and kill Alabama’s pimp, Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), to ensure his new bride’s freedom.
After the killing, Clarence flees the scene with what he believes to be a suitcase of Alabama’s clothes, only to find it full of cocaine.
While Clarence and Alabama hatch a plot to sell the drugs in Los Angeles, mobster Blue Lou Boyle’s men track down the man who stole from him.
As more parties get involved, will Clarence and Alabama pull off the drug deal and make their escape?
The rest of the main cast includes:
- Dennis Hopper as Clifford Worley
- Brad Pitt as Floyd, Dick’s roommate
- Christopher Walken as Vincenzo Coccotti
- Bronson Pinchot as Elliot Blitzer
- Samuel L. Jackson as Don “Big Don”
- Michael Rapaport as Dick Ritchie
- Saul Rubinek as Lee Donowitz
- Conchata Ferrell as Mary Louise Ravencroft
- James Gandolfini as Virgil
- Anna Thomson as Lucy
- Victor Argo as Lenny
- Paul Bates as Marty
- Tom Sizemore as Detective Cody Nicholson
- Chris Penn as Detective Nicky Dimes
- Gregory Sporleder as a burger stand customer
- Maria Pitillo as Kandi
- Frank Adonis as Frankie
- Paul Ben-Victor as Luca
- Kevin Corrigan as Marvin
- Eric Allan Kramer as Boris
- Michael Beach as Detective Wurlitzer
- Patrick John Hurley as Monty
- Laurence Mason as Floyd “D”
- Ed Lauter as Captain Quiggle (uncredited)
The Good Things
Oldman’s Range, +3 Points
From corrupt cop (Leon: The Professional) to punk rocker Sid Vicious (Sid and Nancy), from Dracula (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) to Beethoven (Immortal Beloved) – yup, Gary Oldman can handle it.
Yet, for all his memorable, wide-ranging roles, this may be the best you’ll ever find him. And in less than 10 minutes of screentime, Oldman steals the movie.
Drexl Spivey is some rotten Oreo of a human – a white pimp who thinks he’s black.
He’s hilarious but unsettling.
Dreadlocked, with a scarred face and a glass eye (the exact prop he wore in Dracula), he taunts Clarence, throwing a chandelier back and forth to get a better look at the man mean-mugging him.
He delivers his lines with all the drawl of the streets, especially when he quips, “He must have thought it was white boy day. It ain’t white boy day, is it?”
It’s a performance yanked from a comic book, yet reigned in to keep it natural.
Fairy Tale Soaked in Blood, +4 Points
True Romance is named after cheesy romance comic books.
It has a dark fairy tale tone, grounding itself in its own reality.
After Clarence reveals that he’s killed Drexl, Alabama looks upset.
But she’s not sad or angry, just overcome with emotion. She tells Clarence she can’t believe how romantic it is, unfazed he’s just committed murder.
And they continue dancing their way through their misadventure. Reckless and without planning, it’s as if the strength of their love will carry them through more and more obstacles.
It’s a movie with intense mob interrogations and shootouts. Yet, Clarence takes bathroom breaks to consult a vision of Elvis for advice (as a ghost or imaginary friend, not sure which).
Juxtaposing those grim, violent realities and scenes of oddities without tonally falling apart is not an easy balance — credit to Tarantino’s script and Scott’s direction.
The gangsters, drugs, guns, and violence run right alongside Clarence and Alabama’s cutesy love.
And with Hanz Zimmer’s “You’re So Cool” dreamily dancing its way into your ears (a theme Zimmer must have written on the back of napkins down at the tiki bar), it all creates a nifty juxtaposition.
Dialogue, +2 Points
True Romance is one of his first scripts, but Tarantino’s style of dialogue bleeds through it.
Big Don (Samuel L. Jackson) walks into a room joking about performing sexual favors. It echoes Pulp Fiction’s Jules and Vincent’s breezy chit-chat about hamburgers and fries around the world.
Elvis tells Clarence in true King fashion, “I like you, Clarence. Always have, always will” – a perfect play on “Thank you, thank you very much.”
Although, it was odd that not one but two characters used the expression “something rotten in Denmark.”
And other than adding flavor, the dialogue helps the movie work.
With little time for introductions but many characters in this tale, the writing lets them introduce themselves to the audience with something snappy and get right in the game.
What’s Not Working So Well?
Sagging Middle, -2 Points
Roger Ebert praised this movie for its energy, but I wanted a nap for a while.
We lose the crisp pacing of the opening – Clarence and Alabama falling in love, disposing of Drexl, and hitting the road – because we have to introduce an entirely new cast of Los Angeles characters.
The script unfolded out of order, like Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. But Tony Scott put this movie back in a straight narrative sequence.
Tarantino has said that this change worked, but I wonder if moving scenes around may have been what slowed the velocity.
More Creative Confrontations, -2 Points
Clarence and Alabama fling themselves unflinching into danger with the youthful glee of two kids madly in love.
While that fits the tone and theme of the movie, it gets repetitive.
They confront another hitman or pimp with the upper hand, if not for what feels like the fairy tale plot armor swooping in.
The villains don’t slip behind a curtain, set a bomb to explode, and assume everything will go just fine. But they dawdle, allowing the main characters to tip things back in their favor and come out alive.
It leaves the audience with plenty of torture and bloodiness about these confrontations but nothing particularly clever or novel about our heroes’ escapes.
I longed for these scenes to be as inventive as the dialogue, as whimsical as the tone, but they aren’t.
What About that Famous Scene? -1 Point
**Spoiler Alert Here**
Entire video essays are written about the fan favorite mafia interrogation scene between Christopher Walken’s Coccotti and Dennis Hopper’s Clifford.
But get ready to heave your tomatoes at me — I can’t get into it.
Who hasn’t seen buckets of movies where an expendable character is sat down in a chair and interrogated?
Both they and the audience know there will be a lot of posturing, and then the character will die.
Interrogation scenes make it into a lot of movies so the plot can advance and/or heroes and villains can meet. And I get that.
And in addition to the mob needing to find out where Clarence went, there’s a lot of exposition here about the mob the audience needs.
But while it’s well-acted, it’s a stale setup to dwell on. At over ten minutes, it’s a longer sequence than all of Oldman’s screen time.
But my real gripe is that Clifford’s comeback to Coccotti is to tell a story about Sicilians having black roots, offending them by telling them all they’re actually a bunch of N-words.
That doesn’t age well, and I don’t see the invention.
Should I Watch True Romance?
Total Score: 4 Points
Fans of Tarantino’s writing or Tony Scott’s directing will find plenty of things to like about True Romance.
The romantic comic-book-like quality holds it together. It finds the “kinetic” energy of Tarantino’s scripts. It features a talented cast with plenty of lines to work with. Oldman’s performance is worth watching the whole movie for.
But it needs a bit of invention in its protagonist/antagonist showdowns.
And while many players come together to one big conclusion, it’s a winding road.
But we must praise films that try to execute something different. There’s plenty here for neutrals to give this one a shake.
Overall, this soup is well-crafted but may be seasoned more to fit Tarantino and Scott buffs’ tastes than mine.
Enjoyed this Post?
Thank you so much. If you’d like to get a ping when I have a new article, you can join my newsletter below.
Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
