True Romance

Template:Short description Template:Other uses Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox film True RomanceTemplate:Efn is a 1993 American romantic crime drama film directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, with Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Walken in supporting roles. Slater and Arquette portray newlyweds who head to California with a stolen suitcase of drugs, with the Mafia in close pursuit and their future very uncertain.

True Romance began life as an early script by Tarantino; he sold the screenplay in order to finance his debut feature film, Reservoir Dogs (1992). It is regarded by proponents as a cross-section of writer Tarantino and director Scott's respective trademarks, including a Southern California setting, pop cultural references, and stylized violence punctuated by slow motion.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Though initially a box-office failure, the film's positive reviews, with critics praising the dialogue, characters, and offbeat style,<ref name="rotten" /> helped it earn a cult following. It has come to be considered one of Scott's best films.<ref name="empireonline1" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Plot

At a Detroit theater showing kung fu films, Alabama Whitman strikes up a conversation with Elvis Presley fanatic Clarence Worley. They later have sex at his downtown apartment. Alabama tearfully confesses that she is a call girl hired by Clarence's boss as a birthday present but has fallen in love with him. The two get married the next day at City Hall. An apparition of Elvis convinces Clarence to kill Alabama's abusive pimp, Drexl Spivey. Going to the brothel where Alabama worked, he shoots and kills Drexl and takes a bag he assumes contains Alabama's belongings. Back at the apartment, he and Alabama discover it contains a large amount of cocaine that Drexl had stolen from two drug pushers that he had murdered.

The couple ask Clarence's estranged father Clifford, a retired police officer, for help. He tells Clarence the police assume Drexl's murder is a gang killing committed in revenge for the slain dealers. After the couple leave for Los Angeles, Clifford is interrogated by Vincenzo Coccotti, consigliere to mobster "Blue Lou Boyle", who had hired Drexl to steal and distribute the cocaine on his behalf. He reveals that the mob knows about Clarence's theft since they found his driver's license near Drexl's body. Clifford, realizing he will die anyway, mockingly defies Coccotti, who shoots him dead. One of his men then finds a Los Angeles address taped to Clifford's refrigerator.

In Los Angeles, Clarence and Alabama meet Clarence's aspiring actor friend, Dick Ritchie, who introduces him to actor and production assistant Elliot Blitzer. He reluctantly agrees to broker the sale of the drugs to his boss, film producer Lee Donowitz. While Clarence is out buying lunch, Coccotti's enforcer Virgil finds Alabama in their motel room and beats her for information. Alabama fights back, stabbing him with a corkscrew, putting nail polish remover in his eyes and using hairspray to set fire to Virgil's face before grabbing his sawed-off shotgun and shooting him to death in a maniacal rage. Clarence tends to Alabama's wounds, and they discuss their future together.

Elliot is pulled over for speeding and gets charged when the prostitute he is with hits him with a bag of cocaine and spills it on him. To stay out of jail, he agrees to wear a wire and record the drug deal between Clarence and Donowitz for police detectives Dimes and Nicholson. Coccotti's men learn where the deal will take place from Dick's stoner roommate Floyd. Clarence, Alabama, Dick, and Elliot go to Donowitz's suite at the Ambassador Hotel with the drugs. In the elevator, a suspicious Clarence threatens Elliot at gunpoint but is persuaded by Elliot's pleading for mercy.

Clarence fabricates a story for Donowitz that the drugs were given to him by a corrupt police officer, and he agrees to the sale. Clarence goes to the bathroom, and the vision of Elvis reassures him that things are going well. Meanwhile, Donowitz and his bodyguards are ambushed by the police and the mobsters. Elliot reveals himself to be an informant by asking the officers if he can leave, whereupon a shootout erupts. Dick throws the suitcase of drugs into the air, where it gets shredded by gunfire, and flees. Donowitz, his bodyguards, Elliot, the officers, and the mobsters are all killed, and Clarence is wounded. He and Alabama flee with Donowitz's money to Mexico, where Alabama gives birth to a son, whom they name Elvis.

Cast

Additionally, Arquette's son Enzo Rossi plays Elvis in the final scene of the film.

Production

The title and plot are a play on the titles of romance comic books such as True Life Secrets, True Stories of Romance, Romance Tales, Untamed Love and Strange Love.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The film was a breakthrough for Quentin Tarantino. Released after Reservoir Dogs, it was his first screenplay for a major motion picture. He had hoped to direct the film, but lost interest in directing and sold the script. According to Tarantino's audio commentary on the DVD release, he was happy with the way it turned out. Apart from changing the nonlinear narrative he wrote to a more conventional linear structure, it was largely faithful to his original screenplay. He initially opposed director Tony Scott's decision to change the ending (which Scott maintained was of his own volition, not the studio's, saying "I just fell in love with these two characters and didn't want to see them die"). When seeing the completed film, he realized Scott's happy ending was more appropriate to the film as Scott directed it.<ref name=":0" /> The film's first act, as well as some fragments of dialogue, were repurposed from Tarantino's 1987 amateur film My Best Friend's Birthday.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The film's score by Hans Zimmer is a theme based on Gassenhauer from Carl Orff's Schulwerk.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This theme, combined with a voiceover spoken by Arquette, is an homage to Terrence Malick's 1973 crime film Badlands, in which Sissy Spacek speaks the voiceover, and that also shares similar dramatic motifs.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The movie was cut by the United States MPAA for an R rating for its wide theatrical release. The majority of the confrontation between Alabama and Virgil was cut, as well as the ending shootout scene. There was also an alternative edit where Detective Nicky Dimes is shot not by Alabama, but by Toothpick Vic, one of the mafia hitmen. This edit was the official 1993 rental VHS release, but subsequently all DVD and most Blu-ray releases are of the original unrated director's cut.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The 2022 4K release from Arrow, however, has both cuts of the film.

Christian Slater admitted to have been romantically involved with his co-star Patricia Arquette while shooting, even if only for a short time. The protracted nude love scene they had together was, Slater said, "really special. I lost sight of the crew being around. It was the first time nothing on the outside really mattered."<ref>Template:Google books</ref>

Reception

Box office

Although a critical success, True Romance was a box office failure. The film earned $4 million during its opening weekend, ranking in third place behind The Fugitive and Undercover Blues.<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Open access</ref> It was given a domestic release and earned $12.3 million<ref name="Gross">Template:Cite web</ref> on a $12.5 million budget. Despite this, the film developed a cult following over the years.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 61 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Fueled by Quentin Tarantino's savvy screenplay and a gallery of oddball performances, Tony Scott's True Romance is a funny and violent action jaunt in the best sense."<ref name="rotten">Template:Cite web</ref> Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 59 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.<ref name="CinemaScore">Template:Cite web</ref>

Phil Villarreal of the Arizona Daily Star called it "one of the most dynamic action films of the 1990s".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave it three stars, saying "it's Tarantino's gutter poetry that detonates True Romance. This movie is dynamite."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review remarking that "the energy and style of the movie are exhilarating", and that "the supporting cast is superb, a roll call of actors at home in these violent waters: Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, and Brad Pitt, for example".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A negative review by The Washington PostTemplate:-'s Richard Harrington claimed the film was "stylistically visceral" yet "aesthetically corrupt".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "True Romance, a vibrant, grisly, gleefully amoral road movie directed by Tony Scott and dominated by the machismo of Quentin Tarantino (who wrote this screenplay before he directed Reservoir Dogs), is sure to offend a good-sized segment of the moviegoing population".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Legacy

Empire ranked True Romance the 83rd greatest film of all time in 2017, writing: "Tony Scott's handling of Quentin Tarantino's script came off like the cinematic equivalent of cocaine-flavoured bubble-gum: a bright, flavoursome confection that had an intoxicatingly violent kick. It also drew some tremendous big names to its supporting cast."<ref name="empireonline1">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

The Hopper/Walken scene, colloquially named "The Sicilian scene", was praised by Oliver Lyttelton of IndieWire, who called it "one of the most beautiful tête-à-têtes in contemporary cinema, wonderfully written and made utterly iconic by the two virtuoso actors".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Tarantino himself has named it as one of his proudest moments. "I had heard that whole speech about the Sicilians a long time ago, from a black guy living in my house. One day I was talking with a friend who was Sicilian and I just started telling that speech. And I thought: 'Wow, that is a great scene, I gotta remember that'."<ref>True Romance Unrated Director's Cut DVD commentary</ref>

Oldman's villain also garnered acclaim. MSN Movies wrote: "With just a few minutes of screen time, Gary Oldman crafts one of cinema's most memorable villains: the brutal, dreadlocked pimp Drexl Spivey. Even in a movie jammed with memorable cameos from screen luminaries [...] Oldman's scar-faced, dead-eyed, lethal gangster stood out."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Jason Serafino of Complex magazine named Spivey as one of the top five coolest drug dealers in movie history, writing: "He's not in the film for a long time, but the few scant moments that Gary Oldman plays the psychopathic dealer Drexl Spivey make True Romance a classic ... Oldman gave us a glimpse at one of cinema's most unfiltered sociopaths."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Maxim journalist Thomas Freeman ranked Spivey as the greatest performance of Oldman's career.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

"Robbers", a song by the English indie rock band the 1975 from their 2013 debut album, was inspired by the film. Vocalist Matthew Healy explained: "I got really obsessed with the idea behind Patricia Arquette's character in True Romance when I was about eighteen. That craving for the bad boy in that film [is] so sexualized."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

True Romance, the 2013 debut album from English pop star Charli XCX, was named after the film.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Brad Pitt's stoner character in True Romance, Floyd, was the inspiration for making the film Pineapple Express, according to producer Judd Apatow, who "thought it would be funny to make a movie in which you follow that character out of his apartment and watch him get chased by bad guys".<ref name="HighHopes">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

James Gandolfini landed his role of Tony Soprano on The Sopranos when he was invited to audition for the role after casting director Susan Fitzgerald saw a short clip of his performance in True Romance. Gandolfini ultimately received the role ahead of several other actors, including Steven Van Zandt and Michael Rispoli.<ref name="vanity">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

In the trance song "Solarcoaster" by Solarstone, a sample is used from the film. The sample includes the line spoken by Alabama, "That three words went through my mind endlessly. Repeating themselves like a broken record. You're so cool. You're so cool. You're so cool."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Home media

True Romance was originally released by Warner Home Video on VHS on September 12, 1994. This release contains only the director's cut, however the theatrical cut was released on an R rated rental VHS.

The DVD was released on September 24, 2002, as a two-disc set.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was later released on Blu-ray on May 26, 2009.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Again, these releases only contain the director's cut, and the theatrical cut remained excluded.

The 4K UHD Blu-ray was released on June 28, 2022, by Arrow Video.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Unlike the previous DVD and Blu-ray releases, this release contains the theatrical cut for the first time since the original VHS release, it also includes the director's cut from past DVD and Blu-ray releases.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• Cinema of the United States
• List of American films of 1993
• List of hood films

External links

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