True Romance
- realgshane
- Oct 2, 2020
- 2 min read
I've seen this film more times than I care for. Obviously, it's a cool movie and I get the hype. Patricia Arquette is adorable, Christian Slater is pretty charming, there's some fantastic supporting actors and cameos and there's some bad-ass Tarantino dialogue. But, honestly there are parts of this film that just feel a bit generic. Perhaps it's the Tony Scott of it all - Ridley's less ambitious brother and director of Top Gun and a slew of Denzel Washington films is famous for his quick cuts and slow motion. Personally I can't help feeling like he somewhat diluted the film. This film emerged from an original script which ended up becoming 3 separate films - Clarence and Alabama - the lovers on the run in this film were also the prototype for Pumpkin and Honey Bunny in Pulp Fiction and Mickey and Mallory in the Tarantino scripted 'Natural Born Killers' (Now there's an example of a Tarantino script that wasn't diluted for mainstream appeal).
The 'Lovers on the Run' trope in movies goes back to Bonnie and Clyde and is still popular today - just look at 'The End of the F****ing World' for another pair of lovers on the run and again the guy is clad in a Hawaiian shirt.
But for me the high water-mark of 'Lovers on the Run' movies is Terence Malick's 'Badlands', to which this film is completely indebted. Here is 'Gassenhauer' by Carl Orff, used as the primary theme for 'Badlands.'
And Hans Zimmer's theme for True Romance, 'You're So Cool.'
Pablo Picasso apparently once said, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” That's the only way I can justify this blatant thievery.
The other very notable thing in True Romance is the supporting cast, which might be one of the best ever: Gary Oldman hamming it up as the pimp Drexel is a highlight, as is Christopher Walken and Denis Hopper out-monologuing each other, but please don't ignore Samuel L Jackson, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Bradley Pitt, Tony Soprano, real-life crazy person Michael Rappaport and the incredible overacting from Saul Rubinek in this scene.
He really goes for it.
I firmly believe that everyone involved in the making of this film was taking copious amounts of cocaine at the time, apart from Pitt who was obviously just smoking weed.
3 Tarantino monologues out of 5
No need to thank me, just doing my job for the good people of this fine ass group 🤟
On the contrary, Thomas Rosie is responsible for this fine choice.
End of the F****** world is on netflix if you want to watch it, I binged the first series one hung over morning. Series two is confirmed too. Reading this review made me remember how much I loved the soundtrack of this movie too. Assuming you was the one to put it in jar so on behalf of everyone thank you !!
Hans Zimmer you thief! outrageous.
I think Drexl may have been my favourite character. He was quite possibly the inspiration for James Franco's character in 'Spring Breakers' thinking about it. That's who he reminded me of anyway.
Badlands is one i now must see, and End of the fucking world. I totally forgot about Natural Born Killers, a classic! You're right, Tarantino certainly has a thing for a violent bloody love story, i think he likes that shit more than Uma Thurman's feet. I'm convinced Brad Pitt was really smoking weed too, you just can't play a stoner that well without partaking.