Nerd Rules

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2013)

The spirit of Elvis inspires comic-bookstore employee Clarence (Christian Slater) to do great things. Or is it his sudden love for wild-girl Alabama (Patricia Arquette, who did a mini-run of playing women who fell only for comic-book/movie geeks with more guts than attention to detail; see the film Ed Wood, from the following year) that makes him stand up to possessive pimps, and skip to Hollywood to sell stolen cocaine? Clarence's charisma seems at first a bit implausible; his adeptness at surviving lethal situations would better suit a guy who has stolen drugs and call-girl from gangsters every other day. But Clarence is that much more charming as we realize he is simply unleashing the superman who has been waiting inside him for just such a chance to battle his way past anything that wants to spill his entrails. Clarence and Alabama are too likable for a viewer to want them any other way; the more they run from impending torture and death and gangster smart-aleckiness as only Tarantino can write such stuff, the more it seems like just a trick to lure various creeps into their clutches. The lowlifes never quite see what hits them--if Clarence and Alabama are good at one thing, it's being underestimated. Sometimes this even compensates for Clarence constantly leaving a trail that Wrongway Feldman could follow.
One of the best scenes involves a cadre of gunsels, led by Christopher Walken, getting led to Clarence's father, played Dennis Hopper, thanks to Clarence's carelessness. The gangsters want the father to lead them to the son and his new girl. Walken using scare tactics on Dennis Hopper--I mean, you could flip the roles around and have just as terrific a scene...and heck, it takes a Walken to scare a Hopper. Anyway, once that bit of ugly words and deeds comes to its conclusion, James Gandolfini gets sent off on his own to get the cocaine and bury our brave couple. Full marks to a superb Gandolfini, who corners Alabama/Patricia Arquette while Clarence is off in some washroom reading a book--ack!, no wait, he's off getting munchies. Now, ahem, James Gandolfini versus Patricia Arquette seems more of an easy bet than sorting out odds on Walken versus Hopper. That said, the scene contains a few surprises, and where it looked as if any later scene involving Clarence selling a monster bag of coke to a sleazy movie producer would be minus an Alabama, our wild, plucky heroine with the cocaine shows her hidden side too.
Tony Scott would later riff on his own finale to this movie by essentially borrowing it for another fun movie, Enemy Of The State, but both versions demonstrate that the bigger the crowd present for a drug buy (at least in the case of True Romance), the more rewarding for anyone who gets to watch it from a safe vantage point. The kitchen sink is not present for the final stand-off, but everyone else with a gun and an ego shows up. Perhaps Clarence and Alabama's dreams of flying to some tropical paradise with a couple hundred grand have finally led to a situation they can't charm their way out of: conflagration incarnate.
This is a cool, slick crime movie starring a loving couple who, though they are doing bad things to get their own slice of the pie, are not doing unspeakably horrendous things for more than their slice, while enjoying some nasty slicing. This separates our lovable anti- heroes from most of the other characters, and gives a fun, bubbly duo to cheer for, while the rats follow the cheese. Swiss cheese.