True Romance as an updated Badlands?

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 1999)

I find that True Romance intersects with Terence Malick's Badlands in a few interesting ways - perhaps QT is responding to Malick's classic by copying some stylistic devices. Both films are capable of being lumped together under the "road movie" subgenre of the crime film, so it's not too inconceivable that Tarantino and Scott had Bad Lands on their minds while making Romance. Both films open and close with a voice-over by the female lead and in both voice-overs, the character establishes herself initially as a rather inexperienced person, one who didn't expect to be involved in the action to follow. In Badlands, Kit murders Holly's father and thus begins their crime spree; in Romance, Clarence kills Drexel, the closest thing to a father-figure that Alabama has and likewise makes it necessary for the couple to run from the law. Also, the two films' incidental music is too similar to be a coincidence.