FilmRoar

Directed by Tony Scott (The Hunger, Top Gun, Enemy of the State) and written by Quentin Tarantino (Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, Reservoir Dogs), True Romance (1993) is an violent ode to the best of the action-crime genre, with a twist of love story. The movie boasts a simply astounding cast with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette in the lead roles with Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Bronson Pinchot, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Rapaport, Saul Rubinek, Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore in supporting roles. If you are not impressed yet go back and read that list again. True, some of these actors (Walken, Oldman, Hopper, Jackson) are only on screen for a couple of scenes, but wow, what incredible scenes they are! The scene where Walken (playing a ruthless gangster out to get our downtrodden heroes) interrogates Hopper (who plays Slater’s father) is superbly written and executed. It would be hard to imagine anyone but Walken and Hopper pulling this one off. What is more important than brief appearances by a few grade A actors is that the leading cast is itself top-notch and carries the movie through. Slater and Arquette have a screen chemistry that conveys the eerily demented love their characters share throughout. Rapaport and Pinchot have more screen time than other in the supporting cast and nail their characters.

I had not seen True Romance since it was out in theaters and was urged to go back and watch it again by a challenge to my blasting of Tarantino from my friend Nick. I am very glad that I did, not only did I enjoy the movie but I was glad to re-discover what can be considered a true classic in its genre. As an added bonus True Romance has bumped Quentin Tarantino back up a notch in my book of modern filmmakers.

I have one pet peeve with the DVD production of this great movie that I want to air. This is the sort of detail that you have to look for to notice, but will bug a cinephile like myself. In the Walker/Hopper scene one of the hit men, freshly arrived form Sicily and unable to speak or understand English, has to ask another for a translation of the interrogation. This is a small but important detail to notice since in a scene later on, it is this same gangster that does not understand the police instructions to lay down his guns and answers all challenges in Italian leading to a deadly shoot-out. When I watched the DVD I had subtitles turned on to understand what was being said above the gunfire. Whomever laid the subtitle track down decided to translate the hit man’s Italian to English loosing the motivation for the dramatic reaction for anyone unable to hear the dialogue.

Though it is not a favorite movie of mine, I do feel compelled to give it a top rating of 5 since it is top notch for it’s genre. The question of ‘what would you consider to be the best representation of a genre’ is an interesting one and one that I have written about (though not in this forum? yet) and spoken to before (I presented on the subject at a convention in 2001). For action-crime, I give True Romance the honorary title of ‘Represents the Best of the Genre’.