Saw this last night. While it's definitely one of the most detached, almost heartless films I've seen since ACO (and I love ACO), True Romance still manages to be a worthwhile film. Calling Tarantino juvenile is certainly nothing revolutionary, but to me this seemed like an extremely juvenile fantasy flick. A comic book geek loser infatuated with Elvis manages to bag a hot babe, steal half a million bucks worth of coke from a gangster, fuck said hot babe in a phone booth, get $500 from his loving father he hasn't seen in 3 years, move to Los Angeles...etc. It's like a cinematic "what do you want for Christmas" letter, writter by some little kid from a dysfunctional family. Interestingly the "romance" aspect of the film still manages to seem believable.
But don't get me wrong, I liked the movie overall. It's definitely one of the more inventive flicks I've seen in awhile. I mean, it's a romantic film that happens to be a bloody gangsta flick; like Bonnie and Clyde on speed - eh, more like meth - everything seems visceral and over the top. From the very first "action" scene in the brothel it's clear the movie isn't going to be a standard gangster affair; every action scene feels almost like the pen scene in Casino, in terms of the violence. It reaches its apex during torture scene with Arquette and a shockingly menacing James Gandophini. It's hard to watch, and is almost disgusting.
But speaking of disgusting, I was totally turned off by the "nig.ger wop" discussion between Walken and Hopper. Very few things like that stir any type of emotion in me today, but that entire scene was so crass it became slightly insulting to me as a black person. I would imagine that my reaction to it is completely different than everyone else on this board. Outside of this scene the film is pretty well written, and brought to life by some great acting.
Fuckin Gary Oldman is amazing. That was a performance that you see, you KNOW who the actor is, but still manage to totally forget. Brilliant. Brad Pitt was also amazing. He seems to be best when either insane (12 Monkeys) or drugged out (TR).
Overall it was a good flick, definitely worth checking out
8/10
