Review – True Romance

True crap is more like it. This movie (and several others of similar ilk) are why I danced the dance of evil glee when Quentin Tarantino’s 15 minutes finally ran out (may he never come back, knock on wood). Once again he’s trying to make a script out of pointless profanity and empty-headed macho aggression. The plot is pure Tarantino: a guy who works in a comic book store (Christian Slater) pulls an Elvis (Val Kilmer) – inspired Travis Bickle to save his new girlfriend (Patricia Arquette) from a killer pimp (Gary Oldman). They steal the pimp’s coke, setting a mobster (Christopher Walken) hot on their tails. Et cetera. Every character in the whole thing talks with the same nowhere-near-as-clever-as-it’s-supposed-to-be sardonic patter that passes for wit in these things. At the end of this gritty, cameo-studded but nonetheless largely uninteresting debacle, most of the characters are killed in a gun battle that looks like someone has seen a lot of John Woo movies and is trying unsuccessfully to re-create them. The final result is the one thing a dark comedy slash action movie can’t possibly afford: it’s downright boring. What a waste of a good cast. See if desperate [And wow was I ever wrong about Tarantino not coming back, more’s the pity]