True Tarantino tale, that's volently romantic

Rating: 8/10 (14 July 2014)

It's highly unlikely, we'll ever meet another writer who can match the unique, original, and potent style of dialogue, with sharp, cutting observation such as Tarantino. Not in this lifetime anyhow. Admittedly this was his first movie script, which he drew from his own experiences down at Video Archives. The title here is a killer, where much more is happening than just romance. The names and characters which aren't just drawn from a hat, are loud and interesting, and I'm even talking about the baddies, such as pimp, Drexl Spivey, played with such evil and loathing from the ever versatile Gary Oldman. His demise is one of the most shockingly violent moments in Tarantino history, as was the scene with cutie pie Alabama Whitman (a perfectly splendid Arquette) enduring a hell of a bashing by mobster, Virgil (the late great Gandofini) in that motel suite, one of the strongest cinematic moments, I've craved revenge. When seeing it back in 94, two women behind me went off at that scene violence. Remember you've walked into a film penned by Tarantino, where like Dogs, generated the same kind of violence. He's set a new standard. Believe it or not too, both these films are more violent than Pulp Fiction. The violence here is nasty, and bites. As a follow up to Dogs, Tarantino couldn't cut it more perfect, where as Tarantino films, there's a lot of similarities. As you know he retains some of the same names, surnames, dialogue quotes, and insignificant close up shots of coffee cups and ten minute commentary on things like songs, franchises, and how restaurants hardly get held up. The dialogue springs to life from the very go, as Slater plays an unbalanced Elvis idol, junk food eating, comic reading, trigger finger loner, Clarence Worley and he does it, in one of his best ever performances, where it's still up there, in spite of every other movie he's done. He's set up on a blind date with Alabama, an prostitute new to the game, who accidentally falls in love, creating a manifold of mayhem, when Clarence tries to square things with Drexl, where things of course, don't go as planned. When retrieving Alabama's case from the very dead Drexl, he takes the wrong one. It's full of Coke. So, Clarence and Alabama take off to L.A, to sell it with a contact friend of his, the mobsters and that in tow. Hopper's performance, as Worley's gentle cop father, was a nice change of fine role, where of course I loved Walken as the main mobster baddie, who doesn't take kindly to racial insults. The Q and A caravan torture scene was one of the best scenes in the flick. And the shootout in the motel room near the end, again as a similarity, all so reminded me of the Mexican standoff in Dogs. But this guys got style and knows how to make movies exciting, and this two hour pic is a perfect example of that. I was more for these films, than his later ones, which gets MA ratings instead of R's. True Romance is one of his most explosively violent films ever, and like I said earlier it bites.