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**1/2 (out of ****) Quentin Tarantino wrote "True Romance" before we ever saw "Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," or "Natural Born Killers." "True Romance" is not as good as any of those and is like a scrapbook of pulp and noir conventions. There are gangsters, guns, pimps, hookers, lovers on the run, a Mexican stand-off, and a briefcase full of drugs. There are isolated episodes of weird genius – the showdown between Dennis Hopper, tied to a chair, and Christopher Walken as a mob assassin – but they don't add up to anything. To this day, I still remember the previews loudly proclaiming the presence of Hopper, Walken, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, and Val Kilmer in supporting roles. It's true, they're all there, but for the most part that have two scenes at most, often on only one set, which should give you an idea how disjointed "True Romance" can be. At the end, after we've been mildly entertained for ninety minutes, we ask "what was the point of all that?" "True Romance" is not so much a story as A Bunch of Stuff That Happens. Which was hip in the '90s: have characters come to randomly, undeservedly positive or negative ends because "Life is Meaningless, Man – now let's go watch our bootleg VHS tapes of 'Killing Zoe' and 'Slackers!'" Maybe if I watch "True Romance" again the fates of the characters might come across as more connected to what they do beforehand. I think I watched it on VHS in college. "True Romance" is directed by super-glossy, quick-cutting master-hack Tony Scott ("Top Gun," but more recently "Man on Fire," "Unstoppable," "Taking of Pelham 123," and "Deja Vu"), who is not without his charms, but an odd choice for grimy Tarantino-ode to B-movie cheapies of days gone by. I saw this on VHS by myself at my parents house sometime in the 1990s, either in high school or in college. Copyright © 2010 by Peter Kovic (aka Friday + Saturday Night Movie Critic) |
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