Scenes We Love: True Romance
Filed under: Scenes We Love
The first time I saw True Romance was during its theatrical run, when I invited two female friends unfamiliar with Quentin Tarantino to see the film with me. While they were shellshocked by the abundance of profanity and violence the film contained, I was endlessly captivated – perversely so – with Tarantino's indefatigable penchant for crafting clever, memorable dialogue that celebrated itself as much as the films and pop culture highlights to which it referred. But even having been a longtime devotee of Reservoir Dogs – which to this critic remains his best-ever work – I was unprepared for this scene between Walken and Hopper, two acting masters, as they slowly and subtly engaged in a power struggle that would necessarily – if satisfyingly – end in cathartic tragedy.
Ironically, the sequence is only tangentially connected to the main narrative, a love story between a comic book store clerk and a call girl who accidentally stumble across a small fortune in drugs. Walken plays Vincent Coccotti, a mob boss who stumbles across Clifford Worley (Hopper) while looking for the former cop's son. Coccotti initially exerts physical pressure on Worley to reveal the wherabouts of his son, but as Worley realizes that he's in a no-win situation whatever he tells Coccotti, he decides to tell the Mafioso a story that will provoke his adversary without necessarily having to compromise his dignity, much less his son's location.
Warner Home Video recently released the film on blu-ray, demanding that newcomers and longtime fans like revisit the film to see its ensemble cast in action – be it physical or verbal. And while there are plenty of terrific extras, and a terrific transfer of director Tony Scott's ballistic cinematography, what the disc reveals most is just how awesome actors can be when they're given great characters and great dialogue. (Not work safe, unless you maybe work in a quarry or construction site.)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-07-2009 @ 4:52PM
Jordan said...
Good call, Todd. Always at the top of my list for favorite movie, and without a doubt one of the finest scenes ever filmed.
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7-07-2009 @ 4:54PM
Mike said...
I also love the scene with Slater and Oldman. Very tense, very funny, and ultimately very violent. There are a lot of good ones in True Romance.
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7-07-2009 @ 5:30PM
Dan said...
Yeah, I would basically just like to co-sign the entire article. I absolutely love this movie. I've had a DVD copy for about four or five years now and I watch it regularly, and that scene is absolutely epic. I love when Hopper gives him the "You...are part egg-plant." Classic!
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7-07-2009 @ 5:37PM
Baxter said...
Definitely a great scene in a fantastic movie. But I disagree that it's a tangent. It's important in setting up the sort of diabolical, no-nonsense characters who are after Clarence and Alabama and to distinguish them from the mindless hooliganism of Drexel and his peeps. It really heightens the tension and lets you know that our protagonists will be lucky to get out of this alive.
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7-07-2009 @ 11:10PM
Rob said...
In QT's original script, Coccotti gets furious and kills Clifford. The way it plays out onscreen, Walken brings amusement to it — he has to give Hopper credit for some balls. But then he has to kill him to save face in front of his crew. So he's pissed that he actually has to kill someone himself, which he hasn't had to do since 1984. You get the sense that he almost doesn't want to kill him. He got a good laugh out of the encounter and he hadn't expected that. "And you're a cantaloupe" was a Walken ad-lib.
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7-07-2009 @ 10:12PM
replay ray said...
great scene, great movie. i'm always surprised when i see reviews of "True Romance" that rank it middle at best on their various rating scales. this scene, the confrontation with Oldman, and the one between Patricia Arquette and a pre-"Soprano's" James Gandolfini are my three favorite ones.
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7-08-2009 @ 2:12AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Great movie.
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7-08-2009 @ 1:05PM
plastic said...
he plays a consigliere not a mob boss ;)
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7-08-2009 @ 2:21PM
Andy said...
Oh man, I cannot express how much I love this movie.
I saw it in an empty theater in Lincoln Park MI...looking around the whole time for someone else in there with a look on my face like 'is anyone else noticing that this is amazing?'
It would honestly be hard to pick out one scene from this movie...like Mike says above, the scene between Oldman and Slater is great, and I frankly can't think of a more raw, brutal, REAL fight scene than the one between Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini. At the end of the unrated version, you are literally spent. It's grueling.
This scene is also before Walken became a parody of himself. At the time of this movie, he was still 'that super weird guy'. Great pick.
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