The Films of Quentin Tarantino: True Romance (1993)

True Romance (1993) 

Directed by: Tony Scott.

Written by: Quentin Tarantino.

Starring: Christian Slater (Clarence Worley), Patricia Arquette (Alabama Whitman), Dennis Hopper (Clifford Worley), Val Kilmer (Mentor), Gary Oldman (Drexl Spivey), Brad Pitt (Floyd - Dick's Roommate), Christopher Walken (Vincenzo Coccotti), Bronson Pinchot (Elliot Blitzer), Samuel L. Jackson (Big Don), Michael Rapaport (Dick Ritchie), Saul Rubinek (Lee Donowitz), Conchata Ferrell (Mary Louise Ravencroft), James Gandolfini (Virgil), Anna Levine (Lucy), Victor Argo (Lenny), Paul Bates (Marty), Chris Penn (Nicky Dimes), Tom Sizemore (Cody Nicholson), Maria Pitillo (Kandi), Frank Adonis (Frankie), Kevin Corrigan (Marvin), Paul Ben-Victor (Luca), Michael Beach (Wurlitzer).

 

I’ve seen True Romance 4 or 5 times now, and I find it incredibly entertaining every time. And yet, there is a reason why I’ve only seen it four or five times when I’ve watched Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown 15-20 times each. Watching it this time, I think it clicked as to why it’s a lesser film than those others – and it’s basically that I don’t think Tony Scott, who was a great director, just doesn’t fundamentally understand what it is that makes Quentin Tarantino special. Everything about the direction of True Romance is too polished – it’s got that early 1990s studio sheen to it. The cinematography is too bright, the soundtrack is too hard rock, and the violence is too vulgar. Scott was a studio director, and he was making a studio film – whereas Tarantino still feels like an indie director – even as his budgets have increased dramatically over the years. Tarantino gets precisely what his screenplays need as a director, and gets it. True Romance may well be proof of something I’ve always thought – that Tarantino is perhaps an even better director than he is a screenwriter. None of the problems with True Romance doom it. The screenplay is still great, and full of great scenes. The performances are all top notch, and really bring that screenplay to life. And yet, True Romance is, for me, less than the sum of its parts – and it’s all in the direction. This isn’t meant as a criticism of Scott – not really. He did what he did better than just about anyone. But his best films are fundamentally different from True Romance.

 

At its core, True Romance is, appropriately enough, a love story. Young, pop-culture obsessed Clarence Worley (Christian Slater – essentially playing a Tarantino stand-in) meets Alabama (Patricia Arquette) at a kung fu movie marathon – and after a long night of talking and sex, they fall in love. The problem is that Alabama has recently started working as a prostitute – Clarence was a client (whose boss hired her as a birthday present to Clarence) – and needs to escape from her violent pimp, Drexl (Gary Oldman). So Clarence goes to let Drexl know that Alabama is done – and after a shootout leaves Drexl dead, Clarence grabs Alabama’s stuff and puts in a suitcase – which happens to be full of cocaine – about a half million dollars’ worth. Clarence and Alabama hit the road from Detroit to L.A. – where Clarence thinks his actor friend Dick Ritchie (Michael Rapaport) can help get him in contact with some Hollywood types who will buy all that coke. What Clarence doesn’t know is that the mob – whose coke it was – is on his trail, and the cops have also gotten wind of the deal going down. Another shootout is going to happen.

 

True Romance is not one of the best screenplays Tarantino has written – but that’s more because of how strong his films normally are, not because there’s much wrong with this one. Having said that, I do think that out of everything Tarantino has written, this is probably the one most reliant on those pop culture crutches that he leaned on heavily in his earlier work – and it’s a little too much at times. The bigger problem is probably that Clarence and Alabama, the main characters, are probably the least interesting characters in the film. Part of that is because the most memorable characters all have only a scene or two. Gary Oldman gives one of his very best performances as Drexl, and he basically has that one scene with Clarence. Still, you know everything you need to know about Drexl from that one scene – that posturing, phony swagger, that desire to fit in with all his black friends and massively overcompensates. Oldman is onscreen for less than 10 minutes, but owns it. A few scenes later, Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken show up – Hopper as Clarence’s dad, trying to cover for his son, and Walken as a mobster who wants to get the information he needs from him – and deliver another masterclass in acting, as they spar with each other, poke each other, trying to get one over on the other guy, and force them into doing what they want him to do. Hopper knows he’s not getting out of this alive – so he says what he says to try to get it over with quicker, so he doesn’t cave. Again, these are minor characters – it’s Walken’s only scene in the movie, and Hopper only has one more – but you know these characters completely. You can make the same argument for the cops played late in the film by Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn, who have such a natural report with each other that I wish they did an entire movie with them. Or Saul Rubinek as the profane movie producer who’s going to buy the coke. Or Bronson Pinchot, as his assistant, who rats to the cops. Or Brad Pitt, as Dick’s stoner roommate, who never leaves the couch. Even James Gandolfini as the mobster sent to get the coke – and ends in fight with Alabama. By contrast, Clarence and Alabama are just kind of young kids in love. I do like how the movie doesn’t have the types of moments we expect – Clarence doesn’t blink when Alabama says she’s a prostitute for example. They do appear like they are in love. I just never really understand why.

 

As a director, Tony Scott is smart enough to basically leave the dialogue scenes alone – he allows them to play out at length, and as in the Hopper/Walken scene, he doesn’t add much extra to the scene – and it works. In the big Drexl scene, he adds more flash – but much of it seems to be acting choices, like Oldman pushing that low hanging swinging light fixture at Slater again and again, works wonderfully. Much of the rest of it, not as much. The music seems to be a mismatch with the film – even that memorable score by Hans Zimmer. The violence has a sheen to it, that goes against the kind of sudden, shocking nature that happens in other Tarantino films of that time – and feels nastier as a result. That extended fight scene between Gandolfini and Arquette works as well as it does because of the performances – but the violence itself feels exploitive in an uglier way.

 

But we can thank Scott for one thing – the ending (spoiler alert, I guess). In the original Tarantino screenplay, Clarence doesn’t make it out of that shootout alive, but as unlikely as it seems, he does make it out alive in the film. At first, Tarantino disliked the end – but has come around it over time, saying it was the right ending for Scott’s film – although, it wouldn’t be the right ending for his film. Perhaps he’s right, perhaps he’s wrong – but it does work here. It gives the film a happy ending – and it works here, in part because Scott is very clearly trying to make a more mainstream film. And also because, it is the natural ending of this film. There is a mistake out there that assumes a same ending is more “real” – than a happy ending – but here, it is the proper ending.

 

Overall, I think that True Romance is less than the sum of its parts. The performances are great, and the screenplay, while flawed, is overall very good – and some amazing moments. The direction from Scott isn’t even bad – it’s just not the right choice for the material. And yet, this film is still entertaining from beginning to end.  

Remembering The Films of Tony Scott

Since Tony Scott’s shocking suicide last week, I have been meaning to write something, but I have to admit that I am somewhat at a loss for words. Unlike his most adamant supporters, I do not claim that any of his late films are misunderstood masterworks, but unlike his many detractors, I certainly do not see them as the work of a hack. I do see Scott as someone who was constantly pushing himself – and his films – though. He worked in Hollywood’s blockbuster model, even though he only made one sequel, and never did a superhero movie, his movies certainly represented Hollywood at its BIGGEST – and at times its boldest.


His early films were fine, if nothing particularly outstanding. I know some people love The Hunger (1983), Top Gun (1986), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Days of Thunder (1990) and The Last Boy Scout (1991), and while I can’t say that any of them are masterworks, they are agreeable, mainstream movies, full of broad violence and comedy. I never saw Revenge (1989), which was considered a flop at the time, but which in the past week, I have heard many say is perhaps his best film from this period. From the beginning, his films were BIG and over the top. He worked with Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson a lot, and like many of the films they produced, they had the same style. Had Scott continued in this vein throughout his career than the criticism that he was a hack – albeit a very talented one – would be a valid one.

But in 1993 he made a film that was undeniably HIS – in True Romance. The screenplay was written by a young writer who never had anything made before – named Quentin Tarantino. Scott apparently wanted Reservoir Dogs, but “settled” for True Romance, since Tarantino was already preparing to direct the previous film. True Romance certainly resembles a Tarantino movie – with its non-stop talk, full of memorable dialogue and pop culture references. And Scott does a great job of getting his actors to be their best – especially in small roles, where Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Saul Rubinek and Bronson Pinchot shine brightest. At the center of the movie is the love story between Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, and as Tarantino had written it, he was going to make you fall in love with the characters, and then kill off Slater – a cynical gut punch to the audience. But Scott was too much in love with the couple to do that – and refused to kill off Slater. Even Tarantino now admits that Scott made the right choice – for his movie anyway (Tarantino insists that if he had directed the film, his ending would have been better). True Romance remains one of Scott’s best films.

After True Romance, Scott continued to work in the Bruckheimer/Simpson factory – but certainly made better films for them than most did. Crimson Tide (1995) is as good as any submarine movie – claustrophobic and intense, and built just as much on the characters as the action and special effects. The less said about The Fan (1996), with Robert DeNiro as an obsessed baseball fan, who turns violent against his hero (Wesley Snipes), the better – but maybe it was Scott’s attempt at more serious fare. Realizing he wasn’t Martin Scorsese, he returned to what he knew best – action movies and thrillers. Both Enemy of the State (1998) and Spy Game (2001) are top notch examples of both. Scott certainly did what has become known as the Michael Bay style of rapid fire editing better than Bay ever has – and at the very least, both of these movies are coherent action films, unlike most of Bay’s work.

And yet, if I were to look at the Tony Scott’s legacy, I think his most innovative and memorable movies were the five movies he made between 2004 and 2010 – Man on Fire (2004), Domino (2005), Déjà vu (2006), The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) and Unstoppable (2010). No, I do not think any of them are masterpieces – but all of them push style to the extreme, and then push even further. Unlike Bay, who seems content on repeating himself time after time, Scott was pushing his style further and further. These films have become influential to many action filmmakers in Hollywood – and almost no one can do them better than Scott did.

Man on Fire may just be his best film – an over the top revenge story where an alcoholic former military man (Denzel Washington) is stuck becoming a body guard for a rich girl (Dakota Fanning) in South America, who surprisingly finds himself loving the little girl he has vowed to protect. And when she is taken from him, he goes crazy – and seeks revenge on anyone who had anything to do it. Scott continued with his rapid fire cutting in Man on Fire, but also experimented with other things – like the bizarre color palette his later films would have, the excessive slow motion, used at seemingly strange times (the lighting of a cigarette for example). Starting with Man on Fire, Scott no longer seemed to concern himself with being at all believable – he pushed everything to the extreme.

His next film was the gloriously insane, over the top Domino, about a rich girl (Keira Knightley) who becomes a bounty hunter, and gets involved with one bizarre person and incident after another. The violence is over the top from the get go here – you cannot believe a second of – but it has such a delirious energy, you cannot look away.

I may not have been a huge fan of Déjà Vu when I saw it back in 2006, but looking back at it now, it seems better than when I first saw it. The movie seems in many ways to be a take on Hitchcock’s Vertigo – where the hero essentially falls in love with a dead woman. The sci-fi premise of Déjà Vu is that a machine allows you to look back into the past to see what actually happened, which of course helps police solve crimes. But then Denzel Washington’s cop falls in love with the murder victim on his most recent case – and is determined to do more than simply look back – but actually go back and save her. Déjà Vu is much more complicated than it first appears – and a perfect vehicle for Scott’s style.

The Taking of Pelham 123 is a more straight forward action movie – with John Travolta as a bad guy who takes a subway car hostage and demands money, and Denzel Washington as the cop trying to negotiate with them. This was a more down to earth movie than Déjà Vu or Domino or Man on Fire, not quite having as much fun with all the excess he was then – and perhaps that’s why the reviews were much nicer to it.

His final film was Unstoppable, which was pretty much a perfect vehicle for Scott. This film is about a runaway train, and the two train operators – grizzled vet Denzel Washington and new kid Chris Pine – who have to try and stop it. Since the story was simple – essentially two hours of a train running out of control – it allowed Scott to practice his relentless approach, and amp up the intensity and energy to match that of his story.

It is in these five films, sadly Scott’s last five, in which Scott pushed himself further and further – and strangely, although audiences seemed more than willing to embrace these films, critics seemed more than willing to bash them. Some of his most high minded supporters compare him to avant garde filmmakers – his films becoming more abstract as he moved on his career. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it does seem to me in these five films that Scott is pushing himself – is trying something new in each of his movies. His editing becomes more experimental, his images more exaggerated – his use of slow motion turned seemingly non-important incidents into monumental moments. It is easy to mock these images – and certainly I have at times, since although I admire Scott for trying something new each time, it didn’t always work. There are moments in all five of these films which, truth be told, are downright silly and ridiculous. And yet, while Scott had reached the height of success in Hollywood, he never rested on his laurels – he didn’t phone in his movies. In each passing film, he tried something new, unique and totally his own. I completely understand if you hate these films – they are easy to hate in many ways – but they are not the work of a hack. I often felt over this time period that Scott was striving to achieve something wholly unique and innovative – he just hadn’t quite found the right material yet to make his masterpiece. Sadly, he never quite did, despite my admiration for these later films. But while he was here, I sure had fun watching him try.

Movie Review: Unstoppable

Unstoppable *** ½
Directed by: Tony Scott.
Written By: Mark Bomback.
Starring: Denzel Washington (Frank), Chris Pine (Will), Rosario Dawson (Connie), Ethan Suplee (Dewey), Kevin Dunn (Galvin), Kevin Corrigan (Inspector Werner), Kevin Chapman (Bunny), Lew Temple (Ned).

Unstoppable moves at breakneck speed pretty much from its opening frame to the closing one. The storyline is simple – lovable loser Dewey (Ethan Suplee) is supposed to move a train off the tracks, but screws up. They don’t put the air brakes on, and when he gets close to the switching point, he realizes that it hasn’t been moved over yet. He has 39 cars, and backing it up would take too long. So he gets out of the cab, leaving the train unmanned to, to pull the switch. But then, the train speeds up, and he can’t get back in. He was supposed to set it in a position where the train wouldn’t speed up, but that didn’t happen either. Essentially, what he has done and put the pedal to the metal of an unmanned train, caring toxic chemicals that could wipe out an entire small town, and then let it get away from him. The train, no unmanned and picking up speed cannot be stopped.

Frank (Denzel Washington) and Will (Chris Pine) are on another train. He is the wily veteran close to retirement, he is a trainee, learning the ropes from him. When they hear about the train, and the ill advised efforts to stop it, they are mystified by how it could happen. Yet Frank also has an idea on how to stop the train. If he can catch up with the train, he can latch onto its last car, and gun his engine in the opposite direction – which may or may not stop the train, but may slow it down enough to allow someone to get on it.

And that’s it. That’s the movie. A very simple set-up and story, no real character development to speak of, no real memorable dialogue. The movie is essentially a chase between these two trains, and damn if if it isn’t one of the most entertaining action films you will see this year.

I have had a love hate relationship with the recent films of Tony Scott. He has gone wildly over the top stylistically in films like Man on Fire, Domino, Déjà vu and The Taking of Pelham 123. His films call attention to themselves, but not always in a good way. And yet, when they work, as this one does, they are also adrenaline rushes that few, if any, other action filmmakers in America can match right now. You may not call them intelligent movies – they really aren’t – but they are entertaining as hell.

I’m not sure if Unstoppable is the best of his recent work – I know a lot of people hated both Man on Fire and Domino, but I highly enjoyed both of them as well. But what Unstopplable does have what those other films don’t, is a stripped to the bone storyline, and that suits Scott well. He doesn’t have to spend time on what he doesn’t do very well – character development – and instead gets to go balls out into action filmmaking, and that he does amazingly well. The film is full of exciting setpieces – chases and crashes and people screaming at each other. Scott does do a good job at showing us how this happened, and what is being done to stop it. Washington, Pine and Rosario Dawson, as the woman at mission control talking them through it are actually quite good in their roles – or as good as they possibly can be anyway, given what they are required to do.

Unstoppable is one of those action movies where you simply kick back, relax, turn your brain off and go for the ride. If you can do that – and the movie moves so quickly it makes that fairly easy to do – you will most likely be entertained by the film. If you can’t, you won’t. You already know which category you fall into.

Movie Review: The Taking of Pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123 ** ½
Directed by: Tony Scott.
Written By: Brian Helgeland based on the novel by John Godey.
Starring: Denzel Washington (Walter Garber), John Travolta (Ryder), Luis Guzmán (Phil Ramos), Victor Gojcaj (Bashkim), John Turturro (Camonetti), James Gandolfini (Mayor), Michael Rispoli (John Johnson), Ramon Rodriguez (Delgado), John Benjamin Hickey (Deputy Mayor LaSalle).

Sometimes less is more. Case in point, Tony Scott’s remake of the minor 1974 classic movie, The Taking of Pelham 123. This is a classic thriller set-up of a madmen with a gun who takes hostages and communicates via radio with a normal guy just trying to do his job. This should be an intense thriller. The screenplay, by Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential, Mystic River) is intelligent, and is not just an excuse to string together one action sequence after another – but actually contains some good dialogue, and a chance for a great a cast to deliver some great performances – which they do. The problem is, we cannot concentrate on all the good in the movie, because Scott spends all of his time whipping his camera around in flashy movements, shooting nearly every scene in either slow or fast motion, and constantly freeze framing to let us know how long we have before the deadline – which is pointless since the characters seemingly tell us in every scene. This is a movie that is undone by its style. A little calmer, and this could have been one of the best thrillers of the year.

The movie stars John Travolta as “Ryder”, who along with his team take over a subway car in New York City. His plan is pretty much perfect. He knows exactly what to do to disconnect the cars, so he only has to control hostages on a single car instead of 10. He knows the precise spot to park the car so he can see people coming from either direction hundreds of yards in advance. He knows just how much money the city can get in a short a time period - $10 million – and demands that and nothing more. He gives them an hour to get the money, and for each minute they go above the deadline, says a hostage will get killed. Since he and his men have already killed a few people, the police know he means business.

The guy on the other end of the line is not a cop, but a transit control dispatcher, Walter Garber (Denzel Washington). Once a big shot in transit control, he’s been demoted pending the outcome of a bribery investigation. Despite the fact that Ryder could talk to any number of people, including hostage negotiator Camonetti (John Turturro), he insists on talking to Garber. He likes him, and feels they have a repore. He also likes screwing with Garber and his head – like in an intense sequence when he forces Garber to tell him what really happened with the bribery investigation, under the threat of killing an innocent hostage.

Helgeland’s screenplay is good in the way that it never really goes over the top. Travolta is great at playing these types of bad guys, and he delivers a wonderful performance here. He swears like a gangster in a Scorsese movie, and yet he doesn’t give into his impulse to go too far over the top. Ryder strikes us as someone who may actually be smart enough to do what he is doing, and ruthless enough to carry through on his threat. Washington has a less flashy role, but he is equally good. He is one of the few major movie stars who can play an everyman convincingly, and he does that perfectly here. He seems tired, even before Ryder gets on that radio, and just beaten down by life, trying to make it one day at a time. When the movie eventually requires him to become the “action hero”, it wisely never makes him into a superman. He does nothing in this film that seems that far out of line with who he is.

Surrounding these two characters are a talented supporting cast, who make their somewhat underwritten roles come to life. Luis Guzman as one of Ryder’s henchmen is all nervous energy and paranoia, and he does it wonderfully. Turturro as the hostage negotiator, who like Washington, isn’t really a hero, just a guy trying to do his job. And best of all James Gandolfini as the troubled mayor of New York. This could have been a throwaway role, but Gandolfini makes him into a realistic politician. It’s quite a piece of acting.

And yet, despite of all the things the movie does right, I could not fully give myself over to it because of Scott’s hyper stylization of the material. Scott has made movies in the same style before – most notably Man on Fire and Domino, two films I actually quite liked. But in those films, the insane style Scott used was appropriate to the material. In The Taking of Pelham 123 he is not making a revenge thriller or a straight ahead action movie – but what should have been more of a character study with action thrown into the mix. But the style makes us forget the characters, because it calls too much attention to itself. The movie becomes not what it is about – not the plot, not the characters – but the style. And style can only take you so far.