Reel Resurrection: True Romance

I’ve heard that Christian Slater is going to be on a new TV show this fall on USA. I really hope that’s true - and that the show is halfway decent - because somewhere in the chamber that holds En Vogue and a boy from my 5th grade class named Paul, there is, and always will be, a Christian Slater-shaped hole in my heart.

So it’s kind of weird that I’d never seen True Romance, but that was remedied last night and it didn’t disappoint. I think this movie still turns up on TBS occasionally, so maybe it doesn’t totally require a “resurrection,” but to hell with your standards and rules!

In addition to being a classic Slater performance and showcasing the glory of leopard-print spandex, this movie also sort of introduced the world to Quentin Tarantino, since he wrote it a year before Pulp Fiction came out. (A year after Reservoir Dogs, but if memory serves, Reservoir Dogs gained in fame after PF).

In standard Tarantino fashion, the movie involved a lot of guns, blood, comic books and Elvis references. Its basically about Christian Slater meeting a call girl (Patricia Arquette, she of the spandex) and they fall in love, get married, kill her pimp, accidentally steal a suitcase full of his coke, and try to sell it in Hollywood, unwittingly getting the Mob on their tail.

What’s really cool about True Romance though is the cast. I was blown away watching the opening credits by how many huge names are tucked away because they weren’t big yet: Brad Pitt is hilarious as a stoner roommate; James Gandolfini is a miniature version of his future self as (what else?) a mafia enforcer. Not to mention more noticeable stints by Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman and a semi-hidden Val Kilmer.

It’s always nice to have a funny, early ‘90s shoot ‘em up to watch. But it was especially nice to have Christian Slater in his prime one more time. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until he was beating up Balki Bartokomous in an elevator.

Yeah, it’s that good.