You’re so cool. You’re so cool.
Words spoken by Alabama Worley (Patricia Arquette), the call girl turned 100% monogamous wife to Christian Slater’s character Clarence Worley. Those three words can be said about this week’s fbf: True Romance.
True Romance has got to be one of the greatest love stories ever made. Fuck Romeo and Juliet or those two fuckers on that Titanic boat, we got Clarence and Alabama here by way of Quentin Tarantino and Tony Scott. With these two guys behind the camera you know you’re gonna get a slick looking movie with quotable dialogue for days.
The movie starts off with comic book clerk Clarence talking about Elvis and Kung Fu movies to a woman at a bar. When Clarence invites her to watch three Sonny Chiba movies, she gets up and tells him it’s not her “cup of tea” (it’s good thing she took off because said woman is played by the heroin addicted mom in The Crow, so fuck her), so Clarence decides to go alone. While in the theater, beautiful Alabama walks in and spills her popcorn all over Clarence and the two make friends. They end up hanging out and talk about their love of Elvis and pie. The two hit it off really well and before you know it they get married and get matching tattoos.
What could go wrong?
Well, Alabama has a history, as said before she was a call girl and quit once she fell in love with Clarence. Clarence hearing things about Alabama’s pimp, Drexl (played by chameleon Gary Oldman in a great performance) decides to get Alabama’s clothes and confront this Drexl fucker on how he treats women.
One thing you gotta understand about Clarence is that his whole life has been about comics, Elvis and movies. His head is in the clouds and him confronting Drexl is probably something he’s rehearsed in his head a million times if he ever got the chance to confront a crazy ass pimp. So as he confronts Drexl shit pops off and Clarence kills Drexl pretty violently. As Clarence runs out of Drexl’s whorehouse, he unknowingly grabs a suitcase filled with uncut cocaine. Damn, Clarence!
Clarence and Alabama decide to run off to LA, sell the cocaine and ride off into the sunset. Well, not everything is easy for these two. They deal with the mob that wants their drugs back (Drexl had ties to the mafia as well, the guy was thinking bigger than just being a pimp, gotta dream) and also cops who get tipped off to the drug deal. Lots of crazy shit happens but Clarence and Alabama get through it.
Now, what makes this movie so good is not only the writing and directing but the performances by every single character in this movie. This movie has an all star cast of Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Val Kilmer, Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore and everyone brought their A game. One scene in particular that stands is when Dennis Hopper explains to bad guy Christopher Walken how Sicilians were spawned. The scene plays out like a match of brains and brawn. One guy showing how tough and sadistic he can be to another person and the other one telling it like it is and getting the last word before getting murdered. It’s a scene that will never and should never be forgotten because this may have been the best performances by both actors in their careers.
Director Tony Scott does a great job of making sure Tarantino’s fingerprints are also on the movie. Keeping the dialogue going and letting the characters talk, but in that snappy way that accommodates Tony’s frenetic editing. He does a far better job than what Oliver Stone did with Quentin’s other script Natural Born Killers. In this movie, you want Clarence and Alabama to live happily ever after and live that fairy tale life whereas Mickey and Mallory Knox were just plain evil people. Scott really showed what he can do with a great a script and in my own honest opinion surpassed anything that his brother Ridley has done, even now.
Fairy tales and romantic movies don’t have to be pretty or come in a nice little box like most do. Sometimes they can just be about a call girl and a movie geek who get into some crazy shit.
Catch Mando on Twitter at @manbat33 when he’s not co-hosting the @TalentedSlacker podcast!