…Like I was saying, I watched True Romance last night. It was the first time since probably sometime in the mid-nineties. It came out in 1993, can you believe that?

The first thing that struck me was the credits. I had forgotten just how deep a cast this film had—Samuel Jackson, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Tom Sizemore, Michael Rapaport, Chris Penn, Val Kilmer…and these aren’t even the leads! Some of them put in really terrific performances too, though many are fairly brief. The movie is violent and people do perish.

Gary Oldman’s pimp character in particular is a nasty and creepy piece of work, and Oldman is fairly unrecognizable in the part.

There’s a beautiful and grittily acted scene between Walken and Hopper that I remembered even from my last viewing and I was waiting anxiously to reach that scene again in this viewing. These two actors went toe to toe in a truly gripping chapter, and I think that scene is one that needs to be remembered at the end of the movie, as the credits are rolling, for the tonal contrast it provides to the ending. The movie is more substantial because of that scene, and not just from a plot development standpoint.

In a more amusing role is Brad Pitt as a stoner who seems to never leave the house, but just sits on his ass giving directions to whoever happens to show up at the door. It’s a small part, and funny to look back on now that he’s such a huge star, but it kind of illustrates why he’s such a star—even though the part is small he made the character very memorable.

The stars, of course, are Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater, and they feel pretty perfectly cast as Alabama and Clarence respectively.

Arquette is almost giddily infectious as Alabama who seems perfectly happy to let love drive her every move no matter what obstacles or threats she might be facing, and believe me she faces a doozy or two. She is utterly and completely incapable of betraying the faith she has in her man.

Christian Slater is one of those stars who got lost somewhere along the way. I hope he makes it back some day in some fashion or another. But for a period of time he made a number of interesting and influential movies, this being one. He seemed to have a gift at playing characters with both a strong, stubborn, fierce independence, as well as a more vulnerable, caring side.

At the beginning of this movie Clarence is really just a big nerd. He likes to watch Kung fu movies, and works at a comic book store. He’s got no luck with women and is pretty much a loner with a fascination, or perhaps obsession, about Elvis. But then he meets Alabama, and she sets him free. It’s as if her belief in him, and her love for him, turn him into one of the characters from the movies and comics he loves so dearly. Or maybe she turns him into the King? At least the King from one of his movies. Suddenly he’s a gun toting bad-ass who’s quick with the schemes. He knows just what to say in every circumstance to further his and Alabama’s mission, which is essentially to make a quick buck and disappear to be happy together, and he seems pretty near fearless. This character transformation is fascinating, and Slater pulls it off well. He’s not exactly heroic, but more like one of the characters in the Kung fu movies he loves and who he describes like this, “Well, he ain’t so much a good guy as he is just a bad mother fucker.”

This is a brutally violent movie, not gory precisely, but there is a fair amount of blood, and there are a couple of fight scenes that are memorably ferocious. The language is coarse and unapologetic, exactly what you would expect of a movie written by Quentin Tarantino of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs fame.

The adventure is fast and dramatic, the characters are funny, strange and shocking, and I really enjoyed seeing it again. I don’t think it rises to the level of genius that the two movies I just mentioned in the previous paragraph attained, but Tony Scott is no slouch on the directorial front, and it is a very well put together movie. It’s certainly worth renting. If you haven’t seen it you might wonder how you missed it—True Romance.