Bad Famous Director Ruins Story By Future Good Director

Rating: 1/10 (26 September 2018)

There is simply no denying the terrific platform given to an ensemble cast of gritty character-actors, but the problem with Quentin Tarantino's Tony Scott directed TRUE ROMANCE are the two leads...
Christian Slater's Clarence Worley and his gift-turned-girlfriend Alabama, played by Patricia Arquette, lack both chemistry and experience, seeming more like friends of the apartment-dwelling briefcase guys massacred by the following year's PULP FICTION killers Jules and Vincent than anyone those particular assassins would spend time conversing with, or admiring. Slater spouts pop culture diatribes - ranging from Max Julien to Carol Speed to Richard Pryor (THE MACK cast) to Sonny Chiba to Spider Man - like he's just learned how while Arquette's voice grates on the nerves, and beyond.
The plot is simple enough: After what was supposed to be a one night stand, Clarence falls so hard for Alabama that he decides to get rid of the person who makes her what she is, or what she used to be, a whore... And they eventually wind up with a ton of cocaine as mobsters and cops dog their heels. Backing up to an important scene, straight out of Woody Allen's PLAY IT AGAIN SAM replacing Elvis with Bogart: Clarence, a hardcore Presley fanatic, has a hallucinatory conversation with The King (Val Kilmer), who suggests he follow through on a particularly violent urge...
Though you'd think Elvis gave Clarence more than advice. Maybe a superhero pill since the transition from kung fu cinema fan/comic book seller to ultra violent pimp killer is so quick and unsupported, during the rest of the movie - where real adults take part in some intense interactions - our lovestruck Bonnie and Clyde seem like passengers in what's supposed to be their very own ride.
For cinema history's sake, TRUE ROMANCE was the script Tarantino sold to give him the last-minute power to replace Monte Hellman as the RESERVOIR DOGS director. And on paper, ROMANCE is extremely unique and, most importantly, non-linear, an uncommon style before PULP FICTION paved the way. So the mainstream Tony Scott put the story in order, threw in a glossy Aerosmith track, shoots Clarence and Alabama's initial love scene like a steamy TOP GUN sex scene, and provides his usual choppy closeups resembling inserts in a grainy music video.
Not that TRUE ROMANCE doesn't have value: The famous Dennis Hopper to Christopher Walken "Am I Lying?" monologue is good (for two characters we hardly know as the writing trumps the acting) and there's a handful of fitfully edgy moments set within a sparse Neo Noir backdrop and yet, strangely enough, at times the retro-soaked Tarantino dialogue, not spoken on his own stage, feels more of a neurotic intrusion within Scott's gritty template than the engine of a potential hot rod that, even after twenty long years, just can't shed that new car smell.