True Romance, 9/10
This is a 1993 action comedy(ish) directed by Tony Scott and written by a pre-megafame Quentin Tarantino. It's about a young couple who accidentally stumble upon a suitcase full of cocaine and head out to Hollywood to sell it. The cast is absolutely stuffed with megastars of both then and now: Patricia Arquette, Christian Slater, Dennis Hopper, Samuel L Jackson, Gary Oldman, Val Kilmer, Christoper Walken and James Gandolfini to name a few.
I massively enjoyed this movie. It's very energetic, fast paced, fun and entertaining. It really helped that I knew basically nothing of this movie other than the title, because I always confused it with True Lies in my mind. From the opening minutes I could tell it was Tarantino's writing as the protagonist started going on about martial arts movies. I've often slagged that kind of indulgence off but here it's actually integrated into the plot in a way and isn't just a nonsequitur (looking at you, Kill Bill). In the first ten minutes I went "Oh no, is this going to be a romantic comedy written by Quentin Tarantino?" and after another ten minutes I went "Oh, so it's a romantic comedy, but written by Quentin Tarantino". That is to say the plot is driven by a romance - which is sold very well by Arquette and Slater by the way - but it's an incredibly violent, sleazy and sweary story full of mobsters, coke and guns.
It's got a sort of manic, almost comic book energy to it, since almost every character feels like a slightly (or not so slightly) exaggerated cartoon, but that makes every character memorable. For example I really enjoyed how Brad Pitt's (oh yeah, he's in here too) character is bonged out of his mind in every scene, but always remembers information perfectly, even when giving driving instructions to people pointing guns at him. Fittingly enough for a movie called True Romance, I'd even say the movie captures the feeling of being in love: even when things are going wrong and everything is awful, things just seem bright and cheery and you can't dwell on them for too long because there's just an enveloping sense of warmth around you. This is greatly helped by the upbeat, xylophone-driven score and bright color palette. Even though the characters were for the most part complete dipshits, it was still really wholesome to see them get away with it in the end and get a proper happy ending.
I wouldn't say there are major criticisms I'd level at it. Tarantino's indulgent movie nerd rambling rears its ugly head on a few occasions, but for the most part it actually (somewhat) makes sense in context. There's one scene that's a perhaps poorly aged example of his fondness for using the n-word in dialogue, and it's a bit weird. The movie also starts out even more outlandish than it is for most of its runtime, which made me expect an even crazier movie. By the time Elvis started talking to the main character in his head I had a feeling that anything could happen in the movie.
