True Romance

For other uses, see True Romance (disambiguation).

True Romance
Theatrical Release Poster
Directed by	Tony Scott
Produced by	Gary Barber Harvey Weinstein Bob Weinstein Samuel Hadida James G. Robinson
Written by	Quentin Tarantino Roger Avary (uncredited)
Starring	Christian Slater Patricia Arquette Dennis Hopper Val Kilmer Gary Oldman Brad Pitt Michael Rapaport Christopher Walken
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Cinematography	Jeffery L. Kimball
Editing by	Michael Tronick Christian Wagner
Studio	Morgan Creek Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s)	September 10, 1993 (1993-09-10)
Running time	121 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$13 million
Box office	$12,281,551

True Romance is a 1993 American romance crime film written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. The film stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette with an ensemble cast consisting of Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Chris Penn, Michael Rapaport, Tom Sizemore, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Corrigan, James Gandolfini and Brad Pitt. Val Kilmer is heard but not seen (except in silhouette) as an inner-voice to one of the main characters. Although he is never directly referred to as such, it is implied that he is Elvis Presley.

Plot

Comic book store clerk and film buff Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) watches a Sonny Chiba triple feature at a Detroit movie theater for his birthday. Here he meets Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette), an attractive young woman. They go to a diner for pie after the theater and engage in flirtatious conversation before heading to Clarence's apartment. After having sex, she tearfully confesses that she is a call girl hired by Clarence's boss as a birthday present. She has fallen in love with Clarence and he with her.

The next day, they marry. Alabama's volatile pimp, Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), makes Clarence uneasy. An apparition of his idol, Elvis Presley (Val Kilmer), tells him that killing Drexl will make the world a better place. Clarence stands up to the intimidating Drexl and tells him to leave Alabama alone. Drexl assaults and subdues Clarence and takes his wallet. Clarence draws a gun and kills Drexl and a henchman. He grabs a bag that he assumes belongs to Alabama. When he tells Alabama he killed Drexl, she sobs and finds this "so romantic."

Opening the suitcase, the two find it is full of cocaine, which was stolen by Drexl earlier in the film. Clarence and Alabama decide to leave for California immediately. First they pay a visit to Clarence's father, Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper), a security guard and ex-cop. Clarence wants to find out if he is in the clear regarding Drexl's murder. Clifford tells him that the police assume it to be a drug-related killing.

In Los Angeles, the young couple plans to meet Clarence's old friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport), an aspiring actor. Meanwhile back in Detroit, Clifford is ambushed in his home by gangster Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken) and his men, who tracked him by using Clarence's wallet. They want the drugs taken from Drexl, their underling. Clifford refuses to reveal where his son has gone. Accepting that he is going to die anyway, he insults Coccotti, who angrily shoots Clifford dead before finding a note on the fridge giving Clarence's whereabouts in L.A.

Clarence plans to use Dick's contacts with an actor named Elliot (Bronson Pinchot) to sell the drugs to a film producer, Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek). Elliot, who has some of Clarence's cocaine, is stopped while speeding and is arrested for drug possession. Believing Clarence's story of getting the drugs from a dirty cop, he informs on Donowitz's drug deal to escape prison time.

Alabama is found alone in their hotel room and interrogated by one of Coccotti's henchmen, Virgil (James Gandolfini), who viciously beats her. Alabama fights back and miraculously manages to kill him. She and Clarence talk of moving to Cancún with the money from the drug deal.

Knowing that Elliot's cocaine was uncut, and with Elliot "confessing" in order to avoid prison, L.A. detectives Nicholson (Tom Sizemore) and Dimes (Chris Penn) conclude that a sizable drug deal is about to go down. Promising him that he can avoid prison in return for cooperation, the two detectives have Elliot wear a wire to the deal. Coccotti's men learn where the deal is going down from Dick's lazy stoner roommate Floyd (Brad Pitt) and they all converge on Lee Donowitz's hotel.

As a fan of his film work, Clarence makes a good impression on Lee. They are then ambushed by both the cops and gangsters who, coincidentally, break in almost at the same time. In the middle of a Mexican standoff, Lee realizes that Elliot is an informant and berates him, throwing a hot pot of coffee on him, causing a massive shootout. Dick abandons the drugs and flees. Clarence is shot in the eye when he exits the bathroom, devastating Alabama. Lee, Elliot, the police, gangsters and bodyguards are all killed.

Clarence, however, revives, only partially blinded (coincidentally in the same eye as Drexl). He and Alabama escape as more police swarm the hotel. They are shown as a happy family on a beach in Cancún, with a son they have named Elvis.

There is an alternative ending (Tarantino's version) where Clarence is killed by the bullet and Alabama is seen hitchhiking on a Mexican road.

Cast

• Christian Slater as Clarence Worley
• Patricia Arquette as Alabama Whitman
• Michael Rapaport as Dick Ritchie
• Bronson Pinchot as Elliot Blitzer
• Saul Rubinek as Lee Donowitz
• Dennis Hopper as Clifford Worley
• James Gandolfini as Virgil
• Gary Oldman as Drexl Spivey
• Christopher Walken as Vincenzo Coccotti
• Chris Penn as Nicky Dimes
• Tom Sizemore as Cody Nicholson
• Brad Pitt as Floyd
• Val Kilmer as Elvis
• Samuel L. Jackson as Big Don
• Conchata Ferrell as Mary Louise Ravencroft
• Anna Thomson as Lucy
• Paul Bates as Marty
• Victor Argo as Lenny
• Frank Adonis as Frankie (Franco)
• Kevin Corrigan as Marvin
• Paul Ben-Victor as Luca
• Michael Beach as Wurlitzer
• Eric Allan Kramer as Boris

Production

The title and plot are a play on the titles of romance comic books with their overwrought love stories—very popular in earlier decades—such as "True Life Secrets," "True Stories of Romance," "Romance Tales," "Untamed Love" and "Strange Love."

True Romance was a breakthrough of sorts for Tarantino. Released after Reservoir Dogs, it was his first screenplay for a major motion picture, and Tarantino contends that it is his most autobiographical film to date. He had initially hoped to serve as the film's director, however he ended up losing 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 as, apart from changing the nonlinear narrative he wrote to a more conventional linear structure, it was largely faithful to his original screenplay and, although 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") he realized when seeing the completed film that Scott's happy ending was more appropriate to the film as he had directed it, whereas the originally scripted ending would have been more suited to Tarantino's directorial style.

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

Release

Box office performance

Film	Release date	Box office revenue			Box office ranking		Budget	Reference
	United States	United States	International	Worldwide	All time United States	All time worldwide
True Romance	September 1993	$12,281,551	N/A	$12,281,551	#3,428	N/A	$13,000,000

Critical reception

Film	Rotten Tomatoes			Metacritic	Entertainment Weekly
	All Critics	Top Critics	Audience
True Romance	91% (44 reviews)	78% (9 reviews)	90% (161,589 reviews)	57/100 (18 reviews)	B+

Reviews for the film were largely positive. Out of the 44 reviews collected on Rotten Tomatoes, 40 are positive, giving it an overall "fresh" rating of 91%.

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

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." A negative review by The Washington Post's Richard Harrington claimed the film was "stylistically visceral" yet "aesthetically corrupt".

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."

See also

• 1993 in film
• Cinema of the United States
• List of American films of 1993

External links

• True Romance at the Internet Movie Database
• True Romance at AllRovi
• True Romance at Box Office Mojo
• True Romance at Metacritic
• True Romance at Rotten Tomatoes
• "True Romance: 15 Years Later" article at Maxim magazine
• MovieLocationsGuide.com - Maps and directions to True Romance filming locations