True Romance

Back in the day when I was a wee fecal agitator we had things known as "disaster films". Some large studio would roll out a bunch of aging stars and up-and-comers, throw on a plane, a sub, ship or some tall building, mix in a catastrophe or two and then start killing them off like some Friday the 13th flick. Then along came Quentin Tarantino and all of a sudden the disaster film is replaced with the "roll out the stars, give them lots of big fucking guns and then let them blow the shit out of each other" films. I suppose the old westerns had that thing going for them but we won't discuss it here.
TRUE ROMANCE is a tour de force of stars blowing the shit out of each other with guns and is a great crystal ball into what would follow from Quentin in such films as Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Scripted by Tarantino, this baby features Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, who I think is the most beautiful woman in the world, getting down and dirty with the mob, the DEA, assorted freaks and Hollywood in general. Said freaks would be the likes of Tom Sizemore (who, as always, is great here), Samuel L. Jackson, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper (good guy in this one but still a freak), Brad Pitt and quite a few more familiar suspects. A young pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini turns in a seriously sick and twisted performance which I'll let you see for yourself and Christopher Walken and Hopper share a very intimate scene. Even Val Kilmer shows up as the "unseen" King and though William Shatner is NOT in this picture, he is mentioned. All of this action and psychodrama scored by the fantastic music of Hans Zimmer and under the direction of TOP GUN Tony Scott gives you, the viewer, some seriously solid entertainment. Shame they didn't blow up an airport though and don't tell me after seeing it you wouldn't want to do bong hits with Brad Pitt!