This Movie's Nuts

Rating: 9/10 (13 October 2010)

Revisiting Tony Scott's True Romance for the first time since somewhere in the throes of high school, I find that, as a lifelong Tarantino admirer, everything that tends to annoy me about Tarantino is more evident here than in any of the films he directed himself. And yet what is also evident is what shocked critics and audiences about Tarantino's work that jumpstarted the new generation of movies. There is an unhinged, guileless relatability to his material. Everything he writes is so rich and ripe. True Romance, nevertheless, implodes on itself. It is so inundated with homage, references and explosively gruesome set pieces that it seems to obliviously waltz right past countless opportunities for real drama so that it can continue on its path of totally, completely external and over-the-top narrative clockwork.
You see, when I was 12, I could invest myself in Clarence and Alabama's romance, because I felt like a Clarence, just like a lot of 12-year-old boys who watch a lot of movies. So that's how I fantasized that it would be one day, that we suddenly happen upon the perfect beautiful buxom blonde hooker who likes whatever we like, and worships us from then on. I'm 21 now. Perhaps the least interesting thing to me now is the eponymous romance. Like the relationship between Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in director Tony Scott's first film The Hunger, the dimension to Clarence and Alabama's is too entrenched in male fantasy to be completely convincing. And let's not get so carried away with these theories about Clarence picking up where Travis Bickle left off. It's not exactly a ridiculous or even invalid theory, but let's look at what Clarence really is, which is why so many guys respond to this movie: He is in some way how we see ourselves when we are preteens and (successfully) acts upon all of the sexual or violent or adventurous fantasies that obsess him and derive from an overwhelming intake of popular culture.
This is clearly exemplified when Clarence goes to kill his new wife's pimp, specifically acknowledging that he is haunted by the fact that he's breathing the same air as him and getting away with it every day, that he doesn't deserve to live. Revenge and retribution take the thematic cake in the QT canon. In each Tarantino script, something goes awry in the life of some cruel, brutal and violent men due to the intentional actions, or farcical negligence, of other people. Brutal and violent behavior ensues, and yet there are glimpses of compassion and morality among the tough, cruel and depraved people that populate them, according to their own self-conscious universe. True Romance is the epitome.
The best thing about the movie by far is its renegade structure of reserving entire self-contained scenes for characters who we haven't seen before and won't see much after, interacting with another character who's been introduced already and probably won't live to see his third scene. The pinnacle of the effectiveness of Tarantino's free-wheeling narrative feature is the much-discussed scene between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper. In eight pages of dialogue, Walken delivers every line so coolly, with Hopper not much with which to answer except "What are you talking' about?" and "I don't believe you." But Walken creepily alternates between cruelty and empathy. Then when he slides in for the knockout, it turns out to be a cool, jaw-dropping rope-a-dope. The two veterans' attentiveness is unreserved, their performances candid, so they just lean back and Scott's camera catches them every time, never letting them fall.
Overall though, it's ultimately all dressed up with nowhere to go, only really indicating how it's supposed to be read through intertextual links with other films. Each character and plot strand is either transplanted from vintage plot formulas, specific films, or classic character and scene stereotypes. Characters don't relate to the world in any manner except through celebrity idols, movies, music or character embodiments emerging straight from those very worlds. Natural Born Killers achieved a traumatic degree of satire with such material, but True Romance takes itself very seriously, indulging it exactly what Stone held up to horrifying censure, much to its writer's odd chagrin. It's a soap opera hiding in the Heroic Bloodshed genre wrapped in a Badlands homage with exploitation dressing.
Tony Scott, the ultimate post-MTV filmmaker, has always worked exclusively in the commercial American industry. His films have always been unabashed business and mostly within the action/thriller genres. He's certainly not as mercenary as Michael Bay, and his choice of projects is more interesting. Regardless, he places emphasis on slick, high-concept narratives while drawing heavily from the diffused, neon-tinged visual style of music videos and commercials, complete with rapid-fire editing and prominent rock soundtracks. True Romance is no exception, and he retains his own familiar quick cuts, colored filters and swanky production design while achieving the allusive pop culture awareness of its writer's own directorial work. It's a big, fat pop culture chocolate cake. And just like regular chocolate cake, the older we get, the more we start to appreciate treats of nutritional value.