True Romance (1993)
Directed by Tony Scott
Clarence marries hooker Alabama, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood, while the owners of the coke try to reclaim it.
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And while those and other more obvious inspirations such as Bonnie and Clyde and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (of which actually borrows its score) are noticeable, it still packs enough verve and gusto to create something entirely fresh and influential in its own right.
Scott was doing it on purpose, and he comes right out and tells us he's doing it on purpose in the second scene, which finds Patricia Arquette reciting voiceover narration in an airy, storybook register, while Hans Zimmer's score taps out a melody that can be best described as "the closest that you can get to the Orff music used in Badlands without actually running into copyright issues".
An enchanting score by an uncharacteristically restrained Hans Zimmer (paying vigorous homage to the music from Badlands) further alludes to that intoxicating feeling of blossoming love.
Maybe if Michael Tronick and Christian Wagner did anything with the editing, or if Hans Zimmer’s music was any good (though he does rip off the Badlands theme to some success), but the film’s a technical yawn.
Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are the Badlands -style lovers who head to California with a stash of stolen cocaine, but the show is stolen by Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken, whose “vendetta kinda mood” head-to-head became one of the most memorable sparrings of 1990s cinema.
When Detroit comic-store assistant Clarence (Slater) and novice whore Alabama (Arquette) meet, not only do they immediately fall in love, but the tone of her voice-over lets us know that we're in for a Badlands-style rerun.
Packed with intensity and aberrance akin to David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart,” this brutal mixture of genres is certainly not for the faint of heart.
So let’s get snuggled up on our distant sofa’s/beds and remind ourselves why this is not only one of the greatest crime thrillers of the 21st Century, but also the most beautiful love story ever written (alongside Wild at Heart which I will mention a lot in this article, due to some uncanny similarities—which are definitely not a bad thing).
True Romance is pretty obviously a half-assed Wild at Heart.
Parmi eux, des chantres du cool et orfèvres à la Jean-Pierre Melville (pour "Le Samouraï", 1967), John Woo (pour "The Killer", 1989), Johnnie To (pour "The Big Heat", 1988) et autre Takeshi Kitano (pour "Violent Cop", 1989).
The outlaw-lovers-on-the-run flick became an instant cult classic – an energetic, gruesome and gleefully amoral prototypical road movie that recycles a number of elements of films from the past as far back as Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once and Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night .
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The outlaw-lovers-on-the-run flick became an instant cult classic – an energetic, gruesome and gleefully amoral prototypical road movie that recycles a number of elements of films from the past as far back as Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once and Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night .
Slater goes to see a triple feature of Sonny Chiba movies, and Oldman watches The Mack (1973) on TV, a favorite blaxploitation movie.
Clarence er snarere tilskueren, der som Buster Keaton i Sherlock jr.
Like “Bonnie and Clyde” on crack, the blood-soaked misadventure Scott paints is raw and visceral yet tightly constructed.
The romance in itself turns out to be perhaps too close to the Natural Born Killers/ Bonnie and Clyde versions.
"True Romance" aims to be a "Bonnie and Clyde" for the '90s, but its aim isn't true -- it's just "Bonnie and Clyde" for an MTV generation with a short attention span and an even shorter emotional range.
In this MTV-generation version of "Bonnie and Clyde," Christian Slater is a comic-book store clerk, still unable to shake off that Jack Nicholson imitation.
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Parmi eux, des chantres du cool et orfèvres à la Jean-Pierre Melville (pour "Le Samouraï", 1967), John Woo (pour "The Killer", 1989), Johnnie To (pour "The Big Heat", 1988) et autre Takeshi Kitano (pour "Violent Cop", 1989).
In one scene, Slater and Arquette watch A Better Tomorrow II (1987), by Tarantino's hero, Hong Kong director, John Woo.
Gore and gunsmoke (and assorted film clips ranging from Sonny Chiba's Streetfighter to John Woo's A Better Tomorrow II) are fine things, certainly, but after a while you begin to wish there were a little more here than just the odd collection of brilliant set pieces.