This week’s Disc Dive is one that has been on my watchlist for a while now. I always seemed to miss it on streaming so when I saw it on sale, I picked up a copy of True Romance.
Title: True Romance
Director: Tony Scott
Released: September 9, 1993 (Theatrical – United States)
Runtime: 2 hours 1 minute
Disc Format: Blu-ray Director’s Cut
Clarence (Christian Slater) is an avid movie fan. One day, while taking in a kung fu marathon at the local theater, he winds up talking with Alabama (Patricia Arquette). Once the movie marathon is finished, they go back to Clarence’s place where they sleep together.
After the fact, Alabama comes clean with Clarence. She’s a call girl who was hired by his boss as a birthday gift. But it’s deeper than that because she’s fallen in love with him. So naturally, they get married the next day at City Hall. Clarence now feels that he needs to free Alabama of her old life now that he’s made an honest woman out of her. His plan? Go visit her pimp, get her belongings, and kill the pimp.
Guided by visions of Elvis Presley, and who’s to argue with The King, Clarence heads over to the brothel run by Alabama’s abusive pimp, Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman). After a short exchange, Clarence kills Drexl, grabs Alabama’s bag, and is on his way. It isn’t until they later open up the bag that they realize it isn’t Alabama’s. No, what they have is a bag full of cocaine. Turns out Drexl was hired by the mob to steal and re-distribute that cocaine.
Our newlyweds are on the run with the mob hot on their tail. Leaving Detroit in their rearview, they head towards Los Angeles.
This was a first-time watch for me. I’ve heard great things about True Romance, am a huge Tony Scott fan looking to correct a blindspot, and the cast is stacked, so it was time to see if the hype was real.
The cast is by far the strongest part of True Romance. Admittedly, I am more of a fan of Christian Slater’s later work but there’s something about his arrogance that works well here. Clarence being a movie fan made it easy for me to quickly have an interest in him. Arquette plays Alabama as smart and tough with sweetness sprinkled throughout.
While yes, the leads are great, it was the supporting cast that carried things for me. Oldman is always one to lean into the weirdness of a role and make it memorable. He does that brilliantly in limited screen time as Drexl. And that’s before we see a young James Gandolfini, a young Brad Pitt, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Samuel L. Jackson, and Christopher Walken.
True Romance is cleverly written, surprisingly funny, and gruesomely violent. All things that would later come to be known as staples of a Tarantino script. Watching this for the first time in 2026, it feels like a perfect blend of Tarantino’s writing and Tony Scott’s direction.
My biggest issue with the film is that unfortunately, because it is a Tarantino script, there’s an extended scene with gratuitous use of the “N” word by two white characters. Does it move the plot forward at all? No. Could we have done without it? Absolutely.
I’m glad that I finally watched True Romance. However, with years of the Tarantino mythology built up around it, it’s hard not to feel like the legend is larger than the film itself.