True Romance

When this movie was first handed to me, the hypothetical question was asked "How can you call yourself a Tarantino fan but you haven't seen True Romance?" Now the question becomes "How can I call myself a Tanrantino fan and not be all that fond of True Romance?"

Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely some enjoyment to be had here, but it exists more in flashes of brilliance from cameos rather than as a wholly entertaining, engaging film. There's a reason that the box art for this movie advertises its bit parts as much as it does its leads.

Let's break it down, shall we:

Tom Sizemore - about 8 minutes of screen time. Delightfully plays a cop who thoroughly enjoys watching the shenanigans of the criminal element. Watching Sizemore is like watching yourself watching a better movie.

Chris Penn - Sizemore's partner. Not particularly remarkable, except for the fact that I kept thinking "How did I never realize how much he looks like Jonah Hill?"

James Gandolfini - about 10 minutes of screen time, most of which is spent fighting one of the main characters. Intense sequence, fuelled by how Gandolfini makes us believe that he could be the kind of sleaze who would throw a woman into a mirror.

Val Kilmer - about 3 minutes, playing "Mentor," who may or may not be, but probably is, Elvis, who appears to the lead male in times of inner turmoil. He's obscured and has about three lines, so it's hard to praise the performance.

Samuel L. Jackson - about 30 seconds yet delivers one of the best lines of the film.

Christopher Walken - about 6 minutes. His scene could have been brilliant, if not for its rampant, fearful racism. Later, in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino would use the n-word to great effect in discussing Marvin's death ("Do you see a sign on my lawn?...") but here, the word is thrown around as casually as "fuck", while the conversation hinges on Walken feeling shame at the possibility of being part-black. With any other topic, this scene would have been amazing, but it is crippled by its intolerance.

Brad Pitt - about 5 intermittent minutes, during which he convincingly plays a stoner wastrel, who, in trying to be helpful, ruins everyone's lives.

Gary Oldman - about 10 of the best minutes ever. Oldman plays Drexl Spivey, an insecure white pimp/pusher who identifies as a misunderstood black man. Oldman plays him menacingly, dangerously, but with just a thin veneer of self-consciousness which suggests that Spivey, deep down, knows how absolutely absurd his charade is, but remains devoted to it.

Then we get into the bigger parts.

Dennis Hopper - 20 minutes or so. Playing the couple's concerned father, his best scene is the one with Walken. Otherwise, he stands around and advances the plot.

Patricia Arquette (Alabama) and/or Christian Slater (Clarence) - about 110 minutes with either one, the other, or the whole couple, and they are only really effective in letting anyone in the above list show off or supplying some narrative reason to move onto the next cameo. On top of the fact that their "true romance" is inconceivably absurd (boy meets girl, who had been hired by boy's boss to service him on his birthday, girl quits job as call girl, boy finds girl's pimp, shoots him and accidentally steals his cocaine), it also escalates to insane levels, and everyone accepts this as being normal. If Clarence is the kind of person that you are basing your shoot-em-up drug movie around, then why did you bother to tell us that he has held the same low-paying job for several years, and spends every birthday alone? Clarence becomes a different person when he meets Alabama, and starts doing really stupid stuff for no other reason that "love." The best way to enjoy the movie is using Clarence and Alabama as a path, stopping every so often to enjoy some incredible sights. But, after two hours, the path just ends, in the middle of a field, and you're left hoping that the memories are going to better than the journey.

Rating: 3.25 stars