A Sign of Things to Come

Rating: 7/10 (24 April 2003)

I've been a fan of Quentin Tarantino since I saw Pulp Fiction almost ten years ago. Not long after that, I rented Reservoir Dogs and also True Romance, and fell in love with them both. I bought Reservoir Dogs on video, but for some reason never purchased True Romance, until recently when I picked up the Special Edition DVD. Time has passed, obviously. I still like Tarantino, and I count Jackie Brown as one of my top ten favorite movies of all time. But True Romance, it seems, hasnt really aged well. Thats not to say that it is, by any means, a bad movie. It's not. What it means is that, looking back on it now, you can see future Tarantino-ism's, before they really matured. Theres the love-story at it's center, not unlike Natural Born Killers (and even to an extent Jackie Brown). The stoner who sits on the couch all day smoking. The Mexican Stand-off. I could go on, but I think you see my point. True Romance was the first screenplay that he wrote, and it makes sense that some of what he wrote would find its way into his other movies. I'm not faulting the movie for that. What I am saying, though, is that if you've seen all of his other movies, then you have seen this.