Have you ever fallen asleep in front of the TV and woke up about three o'clock in the morning and there is a movie on that is so unusual that you decide to stay awake and watch it to the end? That's what happened to me the other night when I caught the 1993 Gangster flic True Romance.

At first I didn't know what it was, and then I remembered that my good epinionator friend mike.holmes had told me about this movie a few weeks back and mentioned what a wild ride it is.

The first thing I should tell you about the movie is that it is so full of violence and profane and obscene language that it is clearly not something you would probably watch if you are repelled by that sort of thing. It is a mean, nasty movie that reeks of just about everything I DO NOT like in a movie. Even so, it is apparently a sort of milestone in one genre of contemporary American cinema and I so I decided to see what it was all about. I felt like taking a hot shower after it was over, but I have to admit that it is quite a production. I think that the title, True Romance is about the most misleading title of a movie I have ever seen; this movie is to the subject of "romance" what the movie Titanic is to the subject of "pleasure cruising". There is such a discrepancy between the title and what we commonly associate with "romance" that it seems Quentin was trying to put a collossal joke over on us.

One of the best epinions reviews of this movie was submitted by artbyjude back on 10-31-01 and I refer you to that for a great essay on the film by a person who really understands this genre of film. He tells us in his review that the screenplay was written by Quentin Tarentino and was sold by Tarentino to make it possible for Quentin to go on and make Reservoir Dogs, a hugely successful movie that did a lot to make Tarentino's presence known. Since I am not a fan of Tarentino's brand of films, this at least helped me to see what the writer was trying to accomplish- foreign to my taste though it is.

The movie is really unique in one respect- its huge cast contains many actors who either were very prominent in 1993 or who went on to make it really big in American film and TV work in the years that followed: Christian Slater, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, and James Gandolfini lead a cast of many fine actors who went on to great stardom. I don't know what the salary budget for the actors was on this Tony-Scott-directed film, but I suspect that it would be hard to find the money put all these actors in a movie today like this, unless it was a special project like Ocean's Eleven.

The story moves fast. Christian Slater (Clarence Worley) is a comic book store seller whose mentor/hero is the "ghost" of Elvis Presley (Val Kilmer, whose presence is somewhat hidden throughout the movie but who seems to drive whatever "romance" is in the plot). Clarence hooks up with a call girl, Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) and they fall in love and get married the next day. Clarence decides, on "Elvis's" advice, to go kill Alabama's pimp, Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman). In an unlikely moment, Clarence succeeds, killing not only Drexl but also Big Don (Samuel L. Jackson), and through another unlikely event, Clarence makes off with what he thinks is a suitcase full of Alabama's clothes, but is actually a suitcase full of uncut cocaine which belongs to the Mob. Clarence and Alabama go see Clarence's dad, a cop named Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper), for advice, and then Clarence and Alabama split for Los Angeles in a Cadillac, never bothering to tell Clifford about the cocaine. By now the Mob's henchmen, led by a mean Sicilian named Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken), pick up Clarence's trail and go to see Clifford to pump him for information about where Clarence has gone with the drug stash. In what is perhaps the sharpest interchange in the movie, Clifford taunts Vincenzo into a fit of anger which causes Vincenzo to kill Clifford before Clifford spills the beans about Clarence, a very entertaining scene which again is fairly unlikely, for a pro gangster like Vincenzo would in real life probably have gotten the information before dispatching Clifford. By another unlikely stroke of luck, the mob guys find Clarence's destination address in L.A. and take out after him. Clarence hooks up with an old friend in L.A., an actor, who helps him wangle a deal to sell the cocaine to a Hollywood producer. The police get involved. Alabama has to confront one of the mobsters, Virgil (James Gandolfini), and everything heads for a showdown in a Beverly Hills hotel room. The ending is a four-way split with more blazing guns that they had at the O.K. Corral between Clarence's group, the Hollywood producer's group, the cops, and the mobsters.

The unlikely climax leads to an unlikely ending.

The whole plot, really, is pretty far-fetched, and extremely violent and replete with four-letter words, but there are two interesting elements which inject a lot of energy into the show: the acting and the dialogue. Tony Scott's direction worked with all of this in a rapid-fire way that makes things never dull. There are many small scenes that make you really take notice- such as Brad Pitt playing a stoned roommate to Clarence's friend, wherein Brad almost steals the whole show with his spot-on timing. And the confrontation between Walken and Hopper is just electric.

It is on balance a very ugly, but nonetheless interesting movie because of the direction, the acting, and the dialogue, if not the weird plot. It is definitely not my cup of tea when it comes to movies, and it didn't make me want to run out and rent anything by Tarentino, but if you look at it in a sort of comic-book (pulp fiction-y?) way, it has its points. I'll put my bias aside a bit and give it four stars. Just remember what kind of a movie it is; like Sin City, it's not for kids and the faint of heart, but it does represent a try at something completely different.


Four Stars/****

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age