True Romance

A fast-paced thriller written by Tarantino which is in his usual vein of work. The film stars Christian Slater as a guy who marries a prostitute only days after meeting her. In order to prove his love, he goes to her pimp (played by an almost-unrecognisable, not to mention incomprehensible Gary Oldman) to inform him she will no longer be working for him. Things don’t go quite according to plan and he ends up stealing a large amount of drugs as he leaves. Obviously, the gang are not going to let Slater get away with this, so pursue him as he and his new wife, Patricia Arquette, try to find a buyer for these drugs.

Typically Tarantino, the film is full of gory comic moments, with a very funny appearance from Brad Pitt as a stoner, and ends in a bloody showdown, but will the newlyweds live happily ever after……

Review by
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2008

True Romance may be the old story of boy meets girl, but this is romance Tarantino style i.e. with plenty of cocaine, guns and violence. Those who have watched Reservoir Dogs before seeing this will recognise the familiar script writing of Tarantino, but True Romance has a different influence in the direction of Tony Scott whose previous directing credits include Top Gun and Days of Thunder, but don’t let that put you off! This combination results in some perfectly executed scenes with great dialogue from Tarantino and fantastic visuals from Scott

The cast line up reads like a wish list of male actors including excellent performances from Christopher Walkin, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt and Christian Slater. Christian Slater plays a Clarence comic book salesman who gets in over his head when he falls in love with a prostitute, Alabama (Patricia Arquette). After killing her pimp (Gary Oldman) the couple end up on the run with a suitcase full of cocaine while being pursued by the mob. The solution to their problem seems to lie in selling the coke to a rich movie director in a meeting set up by Clarence’s old friend Dick. The only problem is, the mob want their coke back.

A classic scene to watch out for is between Walken and Hopper and Brad Pitt does an excellent performance as the very stoned Floyd. Also, look out for Elvis, you would not know it, but it’s actually Val Kilmer.

Oh, and for all those trivia lovers, yes, Tarantino does use lines from this film in Reservoir Dogs and refer to some of the same characters. A mystery prize to those who can spot them.

Review by Lindsay MacDonald
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2002

Tarantino's pre-Dogs script hit the screens with a mainstream cast, mainstream director, big publicity campaign, but a decidedly off-beat feel. Clarence Wurley (Slater), a comicbook salesman, meets Alabama (Arquette), a prostitute, by "chance" and they fall in love. However this is true romance with a distinctly warned Tarantinoesque feel - i.e. we're moving in the Tarantino spheres of violence, movie-fans, banal anecdotal conversations, and snappy "street" dialogue. We are also faced with an absurd almost iconclastically (for mainstream cinema) genre-blending plot, as Tarantino combines the road-movie, farce, gangster, mafia, and, of course, romance genres to create a wild movie framework.

Tony Scot's direction is visually very different from Tarantino's style: while Tarantino in Reservoir Dogs creates his visual excitement through snappy scenes, fluid camerawork with almost theatrical staging, Scott uses his locations to very good effect, numerous filters enliven a dreary Detroit skyline for example, and he presents some very visual set pieces that constantly belie his root in advertising: see the Drexl scene or the final moments of the closing shootout, where the room is blanketted in the feathers from the exploded cushions.

The fast and snappy dialogue never quite scales the heights of Reservoir Dogs. Comparisons between the two are inevitable but more relevant parallels can be made with Malick's Badlands, from which True Romance borrows several elements: the vacuous narrative by Alabama, Clarence's killing of her pimp and their escape across the States; Hans Zimmer's music (not the stock Hollywood stuff) seems reminiscent of Badlands' Satie score. Not that tha homage is to be unexpected of Tarantno, a devout movie-fan. True Romance is a superb piece of cinema, and about as warped a mainstream film as you're going to see. It's worth seeing just for Brad Pitt's great cameo as a total stoner, which steals the show.

Review by Mark Radice
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95