Clarence Worley's got a dead-end job working in a comic book store, he lives by himself in a smallish apartment, he has no girlfriend, no real close friends... Yet he still likes his life. He’s got his comics, his kung fu movies and even has his own personal mentor in the person of Elvis Presley, who appears to him once in a while to give him advice. Basically, Clarence is the typical misfit, geek, slacker... except for the fact that he looks like Christian Slater! Worley’s life will change drastically when, while spending his birthday down at the movie house watching a Sonny Chiba triple-feature (how cool!), he meets Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette), a gorgeous and fun young woman who just happens to work as a call-girl. The two fall passionately in love and spontaneously get married. All’s well except for one thing: Alabama's pimp, who doesn't want to let her go. Clarence decides that the thing to do is to kill the bastard. Unsurprisingly, things get messy and the couple finds themselves on the way to Hollywood with a suitcase packed with cocaine, as both cops and gangsters chase after them...

”True Romance” is an instant cult classic. Not only is it self-referential, stylish and exciting, it’s also better written than most genre films, with plenty of memorable dialogue, compelling characters and yes, true romance. This film is early proof that Quentin Tarantino is an extremely gifted writer who knows how to turn his pop culture influences into something original and organic, which is essential to avoid irrelevance. Tarantino is a gifted director too, but he didn't direct “True Romance”. This, his first completed screenplay, was actually helmed by Tony Scott. He's not the guy you'd expect in a project like this, as he's mostly known for MTV style editing and big dumb macho junk like Top Gun, but his dynamic direction fits the over the top feel of Tarantino's screenplay. In a way the movie is a fantasy, what a young guy with a dull life would daydream about: a gorgeous girlfriend, money, drugs, danger... It’s like a Tony Scott action flick, yes, but instead of starring Bruce Willis, it stars the geek in the audience who’d love to be Bruce Willis.

All these horrible things happen, but Clarence is somehow enjoying it; he sees romance in his violent journey, like Sissy Spacek’s character in Terrence Malick's Badlands, one of the inspirations of “True Romance”, which actually borrows its score. This influence can also be heard in Alabama’s naïve narration; like Holly in Badlands, Alabama kinda overlooks all the blood and mayhem and her narration could be taken out of a romance novel!

One of the most striking things in the film is how many big names Tarantino's script attracted. Christian Slater has a lot of attitude as the protagonist, and Patricia Arquette is as charismatic as it gets as his sexy wife with an attitude. Then there's Christopher Walken as a tough-as-nails Sicilian mobster, Dennis Hopper as Clarence's ballsy father, Gary Oldman as a pretty-fly-for-a-white-guy pimp, Samuel L. Jackson as a ho-loving gangsta, Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore as tough cops, James Gandolfini as a hit-man, Michael Rapaport and Bronson Pinchot as failed actors, Saul Rubinek as a big-shot Hollywood producer and most surprisingly, Brad Pitt as pothead who spends the whole film toking on his couch in front of the TV (kinda like Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown). There is even a cameo from Val Kilmer, who apparently wasn't satisfied with playing Jim Morrison for Oliver Stone and took this opportunity to portray another dead rock star, the King himself! “True Romance” is all that and more: it's pure fun and thrills from start to end.