Has anyone seen the new Robbie Williams video? He's turned into some kind of psycho hybrid of the Ch...
Has anyone seen the new Robbie Williams video? He's turned into some kind of psycho hybrid of the Chili's Anthony Keidis and Ricky Martin in the Livin La Vida Loca video...plus it gives the word 'Trouser Snake' new meanings. xxx
Member since:08.08.2004
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I never stop being amazed at how much of an arrogant idiot Quentin Tarentino appears in interviews. How is it that such an annoying man could have directed and written some of my favourite films? Even more perplexing is that, when he wrote the script to 1993’s True Romance, he didn’t direct it himself, he gave it to slightly less cool director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Enemy of the State). Why would he pass up on the opportunity of adding this quirky, funny and mind-blowingly cool movie to his CV as a director, making a round five? It’s not known. What is known, however, is that True Romance helped cement QT’s genius as a writer and, upon first watching, became one of my favourite films.
Outsider Clarence Whorley (the gorgeous Christian Slater) is a lonely comic book store worker with an Elvis obsession (his mentor actually comes in the imaginary form of his Rubberneckin’ hero [played by Val Kilmer]) who, every year on his birthday, goes to watch kung fu movies alone at his local cinema. This year, love at first sight walks into the theatre in the form of gorgeous; pouting blonde Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) who sits down next to him. Secrets shared over post-movie pie, one of the most romantic movie kisses ever (a close-up of their silhouetted heads as they kiss) and a visit to the comic book store later, they end up in bed. Afterwards, Clarence learns that Alabama is actually a call-girl, paid to sleep with him by his boss
who wanted him to have fun on his birthday. Oddly enough, or perhaps fittingly for his character, Clarence takes it coolly and the pair of them decide that they have fallen in love and get married. Aaah, bless, two outsiders find each other and live happily ever after? Not exactly.
Clarence decides, with a little help from Elvis, that in order to have piece of mind, he needs to kill Alabama’s violent, white dreadlocked pimp who is labouring under the delusion that he is black (Gary Oldman in a beautifully over-the-top maniac role filled with boundless energy). Clarence and Drexl have a gloriously disgusting fight, which ends in Clarence shooting Drexl dead, and leaving with a suitcase containing what he thinks is Alabama’s possessions. It actually turns out to be full of cocaine. After seeking help from Clarence’s estranged father (Dennis Hopper) they leave for Hollywood in a bid to sell the coke, helped by Clarence’s best friend (Michael Rapaport) and chased by various members of the FBI and Sicilian gangster Vincenzo Coccotti (the great Christopher Walken) and his henchmen.
The plot takes many thrilling twists and turns that elevates it above other movies of similar genres, but taken apart it is essentially two things – a love story between two real characters, who then get drawn into life-destroying violence in the drug underworld. Most of True Romance’s brilliance is down to the script, which, in the same style as Tarantino’s other masterpieces, is peppered with movie references and Pulp Fiction-esque random cool sayings that would never work in real life – ‘Okie dokie doggie daddy’ being one.
Possibly the best thing about True Romance, however, is the characters. Every one, down to the smallest, is a fully-rounded, slightly weird, over-the-top masterpiece played to perfection by a cast that has no weak links.
Clarence Whorley could have easily been a cliché; the mildly crazy outsider who turns to violence and drug deals for the girl he loves. However, Slater’s performance lifts him out of that into a funny, real person that is never hard to sympathise with. In Alabama Whorley – not a whore, a call girl – Patricia Arquette has created one of the coolest and most iconic characters in film history, a loveable tart-with-a-heart to rank alongside Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction and Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Alabama is hopelessly dopey but endlessly loveable and it is almost totally down to her that you believe so fully in the love story that develops after just one night. Example 1: while her husband his conducting a $200,000 cocaine deal with a famous Hollywood producer, Alabama picks up a napkin, doodles ‘you’re so cool!’ and then coquettishly hands it to said husband. Example 2: when she’s fighting a hardened gangster (James Gandolfini, presumably warming up for The Sopranos) in a bloodbath of a scene to rival those in Kill Bill, Alabama bursts out laughing while sitting in a bath surrounded by blood and broken glass. When asked, ‘What’s so funny?’, she screams, ‘You look so stupid, like that!’ Then she stabs him with a corkscrew. It is one of the movie’s downsides that Gary Oldman’s wannabe black pimp has so few scenes. Oldman is truly brilliant as the hideous, broken-toothed Drexl Spivey who is given to Reservoir Dogs’ Mr Blonde style bouts of extreme violence and spews obscenities in the voice of a West-London rapper: ‘He must have thought it was white boy day. It ain't white boy day, is it?’ Dennis Hopper also shines in his few scenes. His estranged father, ex-cop Clifford Whorley comes of perfectly as an essentially principled man who would put aside those principles to help the only son he really loves. I’ve said it before: Christopher Walken is a walking, talking, acting anomaly, flitting between bouts of brilliance (The Deer Hunter, Pulp Fiction, Catch me if you can) and spells of complete, baffling, shit (Gigli, The Country Bears, Kangaroo Jack). Thankfully, True Romance is one of the good. Vincenzo Coccotti is a slick-haired, terrifying gangster, who, perplexingly, hasn’t killed anyone ‘since 1984’. Although he’s only in it for one scene, he totally dominates that. There are also scene-stealing cameos from Brad Pitt and Samuel L Jackson, the former as a drugged-out stoner, and the latter as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him associate of Drexl’s.
I’ve said it before; True Romance is one of my favourite films, up there with Gladiator, Trainspotting and Thelma and Louise. It has just about everything; ice cold characters (did I really just use the phrase ‘ice cold’?!), an engaging love story, quirky dialogue, a soundtrack that includes one of my favourite Aerosmith songs, Other Side, superb cinematography and direction (QT, you really missed a trick there) and some frenzied, wild, but never alienating fights (the final shoot-out is particularly good).
I guess I’ve said about all that can be said about this movie, so I’ll leave you with a quote, said by the irrepressible Miss Alabama Whorley: ‘I'm gonna go jump in the tub and get all slippery and soapy and then hop in that waterbed and watch X-rated movies 'till you get your ass back in my lovin' arms’. Quite.
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yay!! haven´t seen it and it sounds like my kind of movie!!!! have to find it somewhere then...great review, really enjoyed reading it! hugs!!!
clownfoot 09.09.2004 13:58
A great review of an excellent movie. Would have preferred a little more insight into Scott's direction as it's a visual treat and I thought one of the greatest scenes in cinema history between Hopper and Walken is deserving of comment (wonderfully scripted, beautifully acted and captivating in the way the scene is shot), this scene, in all resppects, really makes the film linger in the memory! Alboy
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![True Romance (1993) [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78537458.jpg "True Romance (1993) [DVD]")
Aug 23rd, 2004
(Aug 24th, 2004)
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