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I wish I could work up more enthusiasm for True Romance. On the surface it seems to possess the kind of wacky ingredients necessary for a fun-filled action film with its own individualistic sense of black humor. The screenplay is by the eclectic Quinten Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs) and directed by king of the hacks, Tony Scott (Top Gun). A mixed bag of talents, yes, but I thought with this talented cast and junk-level storyline that Tarantino would be in his element and Scott might have been able through his mechanical unimaginativeness to cancel out the screenwriter’s bouts of irritable self-indulgence. To be fair, things play themselves out fairly well for about fifteen minutes; after that, the film shows its true spots and makes the painfully obvious impression that it’s running on borrowed footsteps from vastly (and even moderately) superior films.

The story is quite simple, to say the least. Clarence (Christain Slater, with ugly spiked-black hair) is a twenty-five-year-old living a meager but not intolerable life in Detroit: he works in a comic-book store, lives alone, and spends a good many nights at ratty theatres to take in kung-fu flicks. On his birthday night, he meets a pretty blonde named Alabama (the reliably-inefficient Patricia Arquette) and are soon positively smitten, declaring their love for each other on the balcony of Clarence’s apartment that night. As it turns out, though, Alabama is a hooker who Clarence’s boss paid to give his socially-reclusive worker a night of pleasure. Clarence goes to see her pimp, Drexl (a truly whacked-out Gary Oldman with cornrolls), with the meeting ending with Clarence killing him and making off with a suitcase. The case, which Clarence thought contained Alabama’s clothes (yeah, that’s worth taking a chance with your life on!), actually contains two-million dollars worth of cocaine, and this puts this newly-married duo find themselves in quite the thorny predicament. They decide to trek off to Hollywood to see Clarence’s actor pal Dick (Michael Rappaport) who might know some people in the industry interested in high-quality coke for a bargain price. The deal is eventually set up, and their dream of living on a luxury island seems close to being a reality. Little that they know that Drexl’s partners (led by Christopher Walken’s quietly malicious Vincenzo) are tracking them and intend to get their merchandise back and eliminate the couple for good measure.

Not particularly original, huh? The storyline is far from earth-shattering, to be sure, but this didn’t necessarily mean that some good escapist harm couldn’t be had from it, especially since the script boasts a few scenes possessive of some wit and freshness, along with a show-stopping one chock-full of dynamic psychological tension. The film’s a failure, though, which is due to equal parts negligence between the screenwriter and director, as I feared. The plotting itself is almost irrelevant in light of its shopworn obviousness so as to make a children’s pop-up book come off as Shakespearean by comparison, but Tarantino’s desperate attempt at making the characters “happening” and Scott’s slickly commercial direction shining an obnoxious aura of coolness upon them is the ultimate double negative. The characters speak attention-getting dialogue that makes you aware of both it and the film as such; the actors gamely try to make every italicized line their own but are at a terrible disadvantage because this spoken jive-drivel that pseudo-artsy types myopically deem as “colorfully distinctive” never comes off in a normal conversationalist manner. It sounds like scripted dialogue, not everyday speech, and when you can’t buy the words from the characters’ mouths you can’t buy into the characters, either -- in essence, they’re portraying “attitudes”, not people. And with no emotional stake in them (as the central couple, Slater and Arquette -- who dramatically and erotically is a zero -- generate not so much as an iota of chemistry) you’re forced to be guided not by story or structure (not with that flimsy plot) but by Tarantino’s sensationalism as well as Scott’s “Look, Ma -- I’m Directing!” showmanship.

Scott approaches filmmaking as a simplistic form of basic presentation. He doesn’t believe in allowing a scene to play itself out or breathe in terms of appropriate camera usage in relation to his characters ; we’re intended to be romantically enthralled by the Clarence/Alabama relationship, but every scene is overdressed with neon, smoke, ceiling fans (all three Scott staples) and so much frenetic editing (Scott’s ultimate staple) that Scott ends up distancing us from their passion because they’ve no more depth and aren’t treated any with any more than models in a cologne ad. Frequently the audience prays for a scene to contain no more than five to ten cuts, yet Scott is so proudly dedicated to his beloved slam-bang editing that headaches rather than excitement are what’s elicited. Suffice to say, he, unlike Die Hard's John McTiernan, isn’t gifted at assembling multiple shots and producing a logistically comprehensible action scene out of them; as a result, the shootouts are as fumbled as the aerial sequences in Top Gun were -- we’re given no bearings as to the spatial relationship between one shooter and another.

So what we’re finally left with in the end is a barrage of idiotic dialogue and substandard action trying to pass themselves off as integrated film components. Are there any positive qualities to be had in this slickly-packaged piece of hodgepodge? There’s Rappaport’s appealing bewilderment, Dennis Hopper’s phenomenal degree of warmth as Clarence’s father, and a honey of a turn by Brad Pitt as a hopelessly spaced-out doper who seems physiologically incapable of removing his forever-horizontal self from the couch. Plus, there’s an unforgettable scene between Hopper and Walken that will likely be the scene talked about upon departing the theatre: Hopper’s tied to a chair while Walken tries to extract information as to Clarence’s whereabouts, and the two carry on a bizarre conversation on the subject of Italian family origins which is geared to enrage Walken. It’s not that the scene is particularly well-written, but both actors play off each other almost beautifully (almost musically), and Scott’s timing is for once on the mark by letting the two of them define and deepen the scene. But the rest of True Romance is an ass-backwards piece of so-called entertainment. Quinten Tarantino and Tony Scott have certainly concocted an attention-getting package, but it’s one better left suited to the dark recesses of a musty basement.

For a better Tony Scott film, try "Revenge"; for Tarantino, "Jackie Brown" is pretty hard to beat.

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originally posted: 11/17/07 15:01:13
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