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True Romance (1993)
In director Tony Scott's action 'lovers-on-the-run'
crime film (with a script by Quentin Tarantino - his first):
- the opening voice-over monologue (under the credits)
by call-girl newly-wed wife Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette),
as she was driving in an open convertible toward the US/Mexican
border, with her wounded comic-shop clerk, Elvis-worshipping husband
Clarence Worley (Christian Slater): "I had to come all the
way from the highways and byways of Tallahassee, Florida to Motor
City, Detroit to find my true love. If you gave me a million years
to ponder, I would never have guessed that true romance and Detroit
would ever go together. And to this day, the events that followed
all seem like a distant dream. But the dream was real and was to
change our lives forever. I kept asking Clarence why our world
seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so s--tty. And he'd
say, 'That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other
way too.' That's the way romance is. Usually, that's the way it
goes. But every once in awhile, it goes the other way too."
- the couple's first movie date and conversation about
turn-ons, turn-offs, and Elvis when Clarence admitted: "I always
said, if I had to f--k a guy, I mean had to, if my life depended
on it, I'd f--k Elvis," and Alabama's admission on a rooftop
that she was a call girl hired by Clarence's boss as a birthday present,
although she wasn't white-trash and she truly loved him
- after a quickie marriage, their flight to Los Angeles
from Detroit, after killing Alabama's pimp and former boyfriend Drexl
Spivey (Gary Oldman), to sell the cocaine that they had stolen from
him
- Alabama's sexiness: "I'm gonna go jump in the
tub and get all wet and slippery and soapy and then hop in that waterbed
and watch X-rated movies 'till you get your ass back in my lovn'
arms"
- the confrontational face-off 'Sicilian scene' of
verbal sparring between alcoholic ex-security cop Clifford Worley
(Dennis Hopper), Clarence's estranged father, and debonair mobster
Don Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken); after being punched and
having his hand slashed open - Clifford deliberately provoked and
insulted the gangster regarding his Sicilian heritage: ("Sicilians
were spawned by niggers...your ancestors are niggers...you're part
eggplant")
- Vincenzo's retort ("You're a cantaloupe")
and other non-PC epithets - causing laughter and the unloading
of a gun into his head
- the harrowing scene of Virgil (James Gandolfini),
one of Coccotti's henchmen, beating up Alabama at the Safari Inn
and her retaliation by killing him with a shotgun
- the final slow-motion, Mexican stand-off shoot-out
scene in the Beverly Ambassador Hotel with flying pillow feathers,
white powder and bodies, in which Clarence was wounded
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