The Amazing Story of a Bullet-Proof Love ...

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2012)

There's one thing that "True Romance" doesn't lie about: its title. The romance is the core of the story and the soul of the movie from beginning to end. As soon as Clarence Whitman (Christian Slater), a comic-book vendor, fan of Elvis Presley and old Kung-Fu films -translation: a geek- meets Alabama Parker (Patricia Arquette), a hooker, we know and we feel that for each step one would make, the other would follow.
What is extraordinary in Tony Scott's film is how it detaches itself from both action films where romances are usually reduced to cheesy subplots, and from romances since the two protagonists fall in love in a very surprising immediacy. No time for build-ups, for growing complicity, for love-and-hate wisecracks, "True Romance" echoes the classic loves-at-first-sight movies such as "West Side Story", "Romeo and Juliet" or any Disney film. It's a deliberate naivety enabling us to keep our hearts hooked to two endearing characters, trapped in a world of drugs and shotguns, where a bullet can hit you faster than love. The romance defines the couple's new life but also their new quest: living together in peace.
And there's this dreamlike feeling conveyed by Hans Zimmer's score. The "You're So Cool" theme is so close to Gassenhauer's music it clearly indicates that the film is a homage to Terrence Malick's "Badlands". But while "Badlands" was about crime in a romantic setting, "True Romance" is a romance in a criminal setting. One is a nihilistic escape; the other is much more idealistic. Clarence and Alabama try to find a new path for their lives and escape from cops and gangsters, both equally antagonistic. Their escape is materialized by the 'Caribbean' tone of Zimmer's music, playful, sweet with a child-like lullaby purity, embodying a beautiful dream. And the closer they get to their dreams, the louder the music is, culminating with a powerful ending.
And the dream's beauty is worth the deadly price. The dream-like nature of the romance illustrated by the music creates the perfect contrast with its sordid setting, allowing the story to create a dichotomy between love and violence with passion as their common link. The treatment of violence parallels love's connection to the future: it's less the violent moments that scare but the way they are patiently built up. Four times, the movie involves a confrontation where one has no chance AND nothing to lose, except a beloved one. And these scenes are cleverly slow paced and punctuated with thrilling exchanges, just to let us time to revise our prognostics. On that level, "True Romance" stands alone as one of the greatest action thrillers for four specific scenes magnificently written.
The first scene seals the union between Clarence and Alabama when he decides to 'buy' her from Drexl. The pimp, played by Gary Oldman in a terrifying mix between Taxi Driver's Spot and Norman Stansfield, is defeated by the geeky Clarence who wins Alabama's freedom plus a briefcase of cocaine that would start the whole trouble with the Mafia and the Police. The second scene is probably the most praised and mainly remembered for its confrontation between two acting Gods: Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper, the deliverer of the infamous "Sicily" monologue. These two scenes alone deserve to be mentioned among the best pieces of screen-writing from the last 20 years; from Clarence's bluffing confidence in the way he retells all the trivia about an obscure blaxploitation film airing on TV, to the story of Sicilians having African heritage that would have made Vito Corleone roll over his grave.
The third scene involves a disturbing fight between the future Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini, and poor Patricia Arquette, the fight is so unequal that it's physically painful to see that poor creature beaten to death by that big thug. Yet, it powerfully serves the idea that one having nothing to lose can develops a superhuman strength. The last scene is the pay-off of the entire intricate plot, a Mexican stand-off where all the protagonists meet: the cops, the snitch, the dealers, the Mafia, Clarence and Alabama, for a final mayhem of bullets. "True Romance" is also a true thriller and a film served by great supporting performances through roles with extremely short life expectancies. Still, all these scenes have less in common their violence than the way they romanticize violence as the only answer when one has nothing to lose, where there's no passion without pain, no triumph without hardship. Whether it's Clarence challenging Drexl, his father provoking Cocotti or Alabama against Virgil, it's all about love.
These scenes have another thing in common, they break taboos, cops die as casually as bandits, a man beats a woman, the ultimate insult to the Sicilians is made, and a ruthless pimp is defeated by a poor geek, fan of Elvis  The script defies all our conceptions of gangster and crime movies, playing both on the field of homage and iconoclasm. It's like the dream of a movie fan who's finally got the big role in the film, and this embodies the whole dream-like aspect of "True Romance", something transcended by the ending and sublimated by the last lines, some of the best I've ever heard in a film. The movie is pure geek-escapism but written with so much confidence that it refreshes all the dusty heritage of a genre as old as cinema, with a harrowing fantasy dimension.
I mentioned before that Tony Scott's "The Last Boy Scout" had an entertaining value because we didn't have to care much for the plot, here not only we care for the story but also for the characters, and this is why the film is one of the few that belongs to the writer more than the director, a movie written by a man who loved films so much he decided to tell them his way... a young movie genius named Quentin Tarantino.