Tony Scott, as usual wreaks havoc

Rating: 6/10 (17 June 2003)

Based upon a screenplay by Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown) and directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun, Enemy of the State) 'True Romance' follows the humorous and sometimes violent love story of young comic book store worker and Kung Fu film obsessive Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) and his wife, a former hooker named Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette). Through a situation involving Alabama's mean spirited pimp Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), the couple ends up with a big score of drugs and hit the road to LA in order to sell the drugs and to find a place to settle down. As they pursue the goal, Vincenzo Coccoti (Christopher Walken) tries to get his drugs back by using twisted mafia goon Virgil (James Gandolfini). Thrown into the mix are two cops looking to make a name for themselves (Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore), Clarence's friend Dick (Michael Rapaport) and his stoner buddy Floyd (Brad Pitt), a thickheaded Hollywood producer's agent Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek), and an enigmatic Elvis style mentor (Val Kilmer) and 'True Romance' is the result. The list of actors is impressive, not to mention Dennis Hopper as Clarence's ex - cop father. As the plot develops, many of these characters get more and more involved with one another until a huge shootout climax at the end involving many of these people.
The screenplay by Quentin Tarantino is, as usual, heavy on scorching, quick dialogue from everyone on board. The relationship between Clarence and Alabama is wild and filled with youth and vigor as the couple constantly expresses their physical attraction with one other. In other words, they have a lot of sex. While a good sum of the characters are criminals, Tarantino opts to make them distinct. While the cops speak quickly and in bursts of spit, characters like Coccoti are given more careful, slick dialogue and sometimes even monologues (a similar example can be seen in the character Bill of 'Kill Bill: Vol. 2'). They talk in rapid fire ways with a lot of personality and a lot of gusto, and Tarantino tries his absolute hardest to make it all sound real and clever. Like in 'Reservoir Dogs', he fails. While its not alone his fault, the relationship between Clarence and Alabama seems forced rather than natural. The audience is supposed to feel their passion for one another, but instead of throwing at us something to work with Tarantino simply tries to make up for it with sex scenes. The "realistic" dialogue doesn't come across that way, once again not every person in the world says "f*ck" every second line. These characters are incredibly basic and simple, with little to no depth underneath their looks.
Tony Scott, known for usually directing action type films doesn't exactly go the distance in the case of 'True Romance'. His direction follows what is on the page given to him by Tarantino, and while some of the performances are noteworthy it seems to be the case from the actors themselves instead of Scott's direction. Its a wonder how he assembled such a fine ensemble together, but he makes poor use of most of them, and such fine actors like Gary Oldman are given much smaller roles. There are some clever moments throughout the film, but nothing too noteworthy. It feels as is Scott's direction is patchy, and the violent comes of as brash and obnoxious. There are a few scenes of extremely graphic violence, but Scott seems to shove it so much in the audience's face that they turn away in disgust. It doesn't feel necessary to the story like it should. In the case of other films with high levels of bloody violence, its used to a level where it shows the means of the plot but in 'True Romance' its rubbish and it even detracts from the film.
I give some credit to 'True Romance'. Its by no means a bad movie, and the cast gives some solid performances all around. Tarantino's screenplay has its moments, and the movie is definitely entertaining but Scott's abusive direction and Tarantino's trademark messy screenplay aren't enough to propel the film into something "good". Instead, it turns out to be mediocre.
7/10