Verdict
Summary
True Romance is a bit of a classic mixing a surprisingly endearing love story with humour and graphic violence together seamlessly with a cast who are all at their absolute best.
Plot: A comic-book nerd and Elvis fanatic Clarence (Christian Slater) and a prostitute named Alabama (Patricia Arquette) fall in love. Clarence breaks the news to her pimp and ends up killing him. He grabs a suitcase of cocaine on his way out thinking it is Alabama’s clothing. The two hit the road for California hoping to sell the cocaine, but the mob is soon after them.
Review: True Romance is one of my absolute favourite movies and stands out as a near perfect blend of romance and violence. It blends in comedy, mobsters, Tarantino dialogue, a high bodycount and a huge cast to mix it all together to create one of the best movies of the 90’s.
It was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott and their partnership just clicks right from the start; both men are at the top of their game in their respective fields. Tarantino delivers us a witty and rich love story with the backdrop of a drug dealing/gangster film. It’s almost like if Reservoir Dogs intermingled with Pretty Woman. It’s amazing how a story about a call girl and a guy who works at a comic book store who meet after one night and fall in love can be so endearing.
Despite Clarence being slightly unhinged with his regular visions of Elvis (Val Kilmer) you still really feel for both characters and want them to sell that coke and fly off together towards the sunset. The dialogue is quick and fascinating as you would expect from Tarantino and Scott delivers a fast paced and exciting movie that keeps up with the dialogue and plenty of cool imagery (Clarence’s car and wardrobe). The action is all shot with style and it is gloriously violent. The scene with Gandolfini and Patricia in the hotel room is a standout because it’s incredibly brutal and disturbing really showing the consequences of violence.
Another highlight is Christopher Walken’s incredible scene with Dennis Hopper which is filled with edge-of-your-seat tension and sparkling dialogue.
The ensemble cast is amazing including Slater, Arquette, Walken, Hopper, Sizemore, Pinchot, Pitt, Rapaport, Gandolfini, Oldman, and even Samuel L. Jackson in a small cameo. Gary Oldman gives another tremendous performance as Alabama’s pimp Drexl and he is almost unrecognizable by the way he looks and talks.
Hans Zimmer’s score is a nice tribute to Terence Malick’s Badlands which is a a very similar movie in terms of story too. The track You’re So Cool is pretty much exactly the same as the main theme to Badlands – check them both out below and see for yourself.
Overall, True Romance is one of Tony Scott’s best films and one of the most entertaining action comedies ever because of how seamlessly it mixes genres together thanks to a brilliant script, first rate performances and solid direction.