Good - but I'm not sure it's That Good

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2020)

Yes. It's a good film, but I don't really know that it justifies quite the accolades or the overall score that it's received here. Are there perhaps fanbois - devotees of the work of Tarantino, or Christian Slater or any of the dozen or so famous and talented contributors who are rating what they think these people can do, rather than what they actually have done - in this film - here?
The basic story is fairly simple: Clarence and Alabama are thrown together - almost by chance - and they fall for each other. They also come - again more or less by chance - to find themselves in possession of a suitcase full of cocaine. A true romance grows - between the man, the woman and the illicit wealth...
Some of the acting is top notch and some of the episodes in the tale are entertaining. The whole though, is a little disjointed: strong gory violence and drug taking are pretty much ubiquitous and just about the deepest message of the story is that some people get lucky while some notorious criminals and law enforcers can be absurdly incompetent and trigger-happy.
Take, for instance the scene between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper. Perhaps these are impressive performances but the scene is both violent and exceptionally racist - and all for nothing. The plot motivation behind the racism is comparatively clear, but does that make it justified? Not for me. And does the scene advance the plot? Only really in the last couple of seconds, and only in a way that has been trailed far too obviously about five minutes earlier.
We still have to wait a further fifteen minutes - about an hour into the movie - before things get going properly in a long scene between Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini.
By all means watch the film - enjoy the film - but don't forget that violence and drug-taking and racism have consequences - and not just for other people. In the real world, the central actors are more often damaged too.
Overall 6.5/10