True Romance
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Photography: Jeffrey L. Kimball
Starring: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper.
Year: 1993
Country: USA, France.
We all know by now, I'm sure, that last month director Tony Scott died tragically. It dawned me as the initial shock and sadness faded that I hadn't seen one of the late Mr. Scott's most critically acclaimed films, True Romance. Browsing in a cheap second-hand DVD and Games store, I saw a copy of True Romance and decided to pick it up.
For clearance, this is the original cut of the film, not the later Tarantino Cut (Sometimes known as the Director's Cut) which I understand has a darker ending and has a non-liner narrative.
Tarantino gets the right to get his own cut because he wrote the screenplay (long before he made Reservoir Dogs, and it's apparent from scene one that it's a QT screenplay. True Romance is much more a Quentin Tarantino film than it is a Tony Scott film, sorry auteur theory. Any time the male lead, Clarence, is talking about cinema or music, it's just Quentin talking vicariously through Christian Slater.
Clarence Worley is a Elvis Presley and Sonny Chiba obsessed, law-abiding, 20-something guy who works in comic-book store and seems to repel members of the opposite sex, until he meets Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a sweet talking call-girl who shares many of his interests. While freshening up in the bathroom, he's visited my his mentor (who only Clarence can see) played by Val Kilmer. He's never referred to by name and is credited only as Mentor, but he is clearly meant to be Elvis. He couldn't be credited as such because of legal reasons. Elvi-The Mentor persuades Clarence to kill Alabama's pimp, Drexl. After he kills him, Clarence finds a suitcase full of cocaine. Clarence and Alabama drive down to L.A to try and sell on the cocaine to a movie producer and use to money to start a new life together.
True Romance has a fantastic supporting cast; Dennis Hooper play's Clarence's Dad, Gary Oldman is like he often is, unrecognisable, as Drexl the pimp, Brad Pitt in an early role for him playing a stoner, Saul Rubinek playing a movie producer supposedly based on both Joel Silver and Oliver Stone. And Christopher Walken who, like in Pulp Fiction, is only in one scene but it's the most memorable scene in the film.
The film, being from '93, is in Scott's original recognizable style (long lenses and smoke diffusion), before he radically changed it, for the worse in my opinion, in the last decade with Man on Fire and Domino, where he drained a lot of the colour and overused used fast zooms in and out and other camera techniques.
Who'd have thought that one of the best romance movies ever made would be full of drugs, violence and black comedy? Ok, so maybe True Romance isn't one of the best romance films ever made, it certainly doesn't stand with movies like Casablanca, Brief Encounter or Before Sunrise, but it certainly a lot fun and packs a pretty big punch. Thank you Tony, you will be missed.
Score: 3.5/5
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