True Romance
Kinji Go

If you’re like me and have to endure the weekly chick flick with your girlfriend, you would definitely benefit from taking the time to rent “True Romance.”  You can fool her into thinking she is about to watch another monotonous love story, but in reality this film is quite the opposite.  If you’re brave enough to e risk fooling her, with the boring title, your reward is, arguably, the best screenplay by Quentin Tarantino that he did not direct.  “True Romance,” from beginning to end is jammed with thrilling crime scenes, passionate sex and a clever story line.  “True Romance” will leave you breathless and gripping your chair in suspense.

The film starts out like with the lonely character “Clarence Worley” played by Christian Slater, working his day job as a counter clerk at a video store.  Tony Scott, the director, makes it apparent, from the start, that Clarence is widely liked by all his friends, but remains a bit of a loner.  His friends plan to hire, secretly of course, a call girl for his birthday, to help break him out of his shell and have fun.  The setup takes place in the local movie theater where Clarence often goes to watch his favourite movie genre: Kung Fu.  “Alabama Whitman,” played by Patricia Arquette, plays a great roll in the movie.  She begins to spill popcorn all over Clarence who is in an empty movie theater and the romance begins.

After the movie, Clarence takes Alabama for pie, a nice joke, I guess, where they talk and he is able to seduce her back to his place.  You can tell the director is setting them up to fall in love, even though her job was only to have sex with him.  She starts to feel bad, staring at him as he sleeps. She decides to wake him up and tell him the truth.  Blind with love, Clarence forgives Alabama for her job and vows revenge on her pimp.  This is where the movie begins to make a climax and the violence ensues.

Clarence begins to make his way to the pimp’s hideout while Alabama stays safely at his home.  When Clarence arrives you can tell he is not prepared for what he is about to encounter.  The scrubby pimp welcomes him into his nasty house and they begin to converse about Alabama’s location.  Director Tony Scott wants you to believe throughout the movie that Clarence is not prepared or planning his next step.  Instead, I think Clarence did a fantastic job navigating his way to freedom and eventually filthy rich also.

If you enjoy crime thrillers this is a movie for you.  Since the movie is from 1993, take it as a warm up for the Tarantino movies that follow, such as “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.” He sold the script to help fund future projects. I will always wonder how the movie would have turned out if Tarantino had full reigns.