True Romance ***** (1993, Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Chris Penn) – Classic Movie Review 756

Director Tony Scott’s shocking and exhilarating 1993 crime thriller turns Quentin Tarantino’s pre-Reservoir Dogs screenplay into an astounding designer-violence style object. It is a heady, giddying odyssey into the dark side.

Christian Slater stars as Clarence Worley, a streetwise Detroit kid working in a comic-book store, who unwittingly is fixed up for his birthday with Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette), a sexy, dim-witted hooker, after she spills popcorn over him comes on to him at a movie theatre. They instantly fall for each other, have sex, declare love and impulsively and immediately get married.

But then, against Alabama’s better judgment (so not so dim then?), Clarence sets off to get her stuff, and takes murderous revenge on her vicious, dreadlocked pimp Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), unwittingly snatching his suitcase stash of mob-owned cocaine, and going on the run together.

They call in on Clarence’s estranged ex-cop father Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper) to seek his help, and, apparently in the clear over the cocaine, seize the chance to start a new life together, and head for LA in a pink Cadillac, to sell the drugs.

But the villains follow the runaway couple’s trail to LA, where they’re trying to sell the coke to a high-profile Hollywood movie producer (Saul Rubinek) called Lee Donowitz (apparently modelled on Joel Silver), whose big hit was the Vietnam epic Coming Home in a Bodybag. They leave a trial of mayhem everywhere on their way to a bloody climactic shootout in a Hollywood hotel.

Actors, director and writer are infectiously enjoying the crazy black humour in Tarantino’s screenplay, and there’s no denying the astonishing power of the material and handling, though this is a sadistic story and a movie with a perverted sense of fun. It’s always full on and OTT, and never stops for breath in two hours. Twenty-one men are shot dead in the movie and the F word is used 225 times.

Beating off strong competition to land their roles, the young, cute Slater and Arquette are absolutely excellent, and surprisingly engaging, pitching their eager-beaver, out-of-their-depth performances just right, sharing great screen chemistry. The iconic star cameos by Dennis Hopper as ex-cop Clifford Worley, Christopher Walken as sadistic Sicilian mobster kingpin Vincenzo Coccotti and Brad Pitt as druggie lout Floyd – are extremely effective. It was Pitt’s idea for Floyd to be a brain-dead couch-potato stoner, and he’s funny.

Also making their mark are Val Kilmer, Chris Penn, James Gandolfini, Samuel L Jackson, Bronson Pinchot, Michael Rapaport, Conchata Ferrell, Victor Argo and Tom Sizemore, all playing at the top of their game.

There are many outstanding scenes in the movie, but Walken and Hopper share the film’s most memorable sequence, when Walken and his boys torture Hopper to try to find out Slater’s whereabouts. The brilliant writing and playing here turn that extremely nasty-toned scene, with its racist dialogue, into an instant classic.

Scott’s flashy filming of the deaths and slick handling of the action serve to make Tarantino’s cynical script seem even more reprehensible. Scott makes a dazzling job of the violent, foul-mouthed material, though it would have been interesting to have seen a Tarantino-directed version of this film.

His original ending is changed into an upbeat gear by Scott. Tarantino agreed that Scott’s happy ending was better for the film that he made. But Tarantino added if he had directed the film, he would have used the ending that he had originally written, because he’d have made the film in a different tone.

The screenplay was part of a 500-page script called The Open Road, started by Roger Avary and completed by his friend Tarantino in 1988. The unfilmable epic was split in two and the other half was used for Natural Born Killers (1994). In both films Tom Sizemore plays a cop. Tarantino sold the script for the union minimum fee of $50,000. With this he bought the red Chevy convertible that Vincent Vega drives in Pulp Fiction (1994) Tarantino wrote the roles of Clarence and Alabama for Robert Carradine and Joan Cusack.

A risible 95-minute US TV movie version cuts all the violence, racist language and four-letter words that the film motors on. The UK TV version shows basically the original BBFC cut cinema release version, which was the US R-rated version with one further cut, but with a few other adjustments that include out-takes. In August 1999, the British Board of Film Classification gave the longer Director’s Cut an uncut 18 certificate for video.

Arquette’s four-year-old son Enzo Rossi appears in the final scene.

It is again on release in UK cinemas on 18 November 2015.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 756

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