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| Christian
Slater, Patricia Arquette, David Rapaport, Dennis Hopper,
Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Clarence Worley (Christian Slater):
Well, he ain't so much a good guy as he is just a bad mother fucker.
I mean,
he
gets paid by people to fuck guys up.
A young couple tries to sell a stolen
suitcase full of drugs while on the run from the police and the
mafia.
 Like
a snake eating its own tale, True Romance brings Tarantino's
cleverly pulp-based screenplay back to its roots by turning it
into a pulp movie in its own right. Shedding the script's clever
non-chronological construction, director Tony Scott instead pays
explicit homage to the many road movies and couple-on-the-run classics
that formed the implicit basis of the screenplay.
Setting the tone is the film's opening that re-uses the
signature music from Badlands, while Patricia Arquette's
lazy voice-over nearly draws the scene into the realm of parody.
The film then shifts gears abruptly and erratically, moving from
Tarantino's dialogues, laced with references to pop culture, through
steamy Hollywood cut-and-paste romance sequences, and into sudden,
cartoonish outbursts of extreme violence. This style doesn't allow
the film to build much narrative momentum or any sense of stylistic
coherence, as Scott lingers both over scenes of gruelling violence
and of bizarre, self-referential
comedy. It does however allow for a parade of scene-stealing guest
performances from Oldman, Hopper, Walken and Pitt that end up serving
as the film's structural tentpoles, and give this bizarre cult
classic its biggest replay value. |
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First released for Region 1
as a non-anamorphic bare-bones release, a more recent two-disc
edition carries the longer 'unrated director's cut' of the
film, along with much improved audio and video and a plethora
of extras including documentaries, deleted scenes, storyboards
and three audio commentaries. An identical set has been released
for Region 2 in the UK. The Dutch/Belgian Region 2 release
is also a two-disc set with the same transfer and audio mixes,
but none of the extras featured on the American special edition.
Instead, it carries only some promotional featurettes, a
trailer and a handful of stills. The Dutch/Belgian Region
2 release served as the basis for this review.
The anamorphic widescreen
image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 2.35:1. While
significantly better than any of the non-anamorphic transfers
to appear on DVD previously, the image quality on this remastered
release cannot be considered reference quality due to its
lack of strong detail. Much of this can be blamed on the
general haziness caused by the many filters and smoke effects
that hace become director Tony Scott's signature style,
but there also seems to be a general murkiness to the print,
along with some minor grain, that prevents this from looking
as good as it could have.
The Dolby
Digital 5.1 sound mix was created from the film's original
theatrical Dolby Surround soundtrack, and remains strongly
focused on the front soundstage, with relatively little use
of the rear channel speakers or subwoofer. The DTS mix found
on-board has a more open sound, with some increased detail,
but little significant difference from its Dolby Digital
counterpart.
Dutch DVD enthusiasts expecting
a double-disc special edition release even remotely similar
to the feature-laden American release (which has almost identical
packaging) are in for a big disappointment, as none of
the terrific extras from that terrific release have been
included here. Disc two in this set actually carries so few
extras, all of which are simply promotional material from
the time of the film's release, that it's somewhat inexplicable
why such a poorly produced DVD should require two discs at
all. One might even call this deliberately misleading, as
the packaging would clearly seem to identify the set as a
'Collector's Edition', a term hardly appropriate for the
contents found within. None of the EPK material included
here offers anything even approaching a degree of insight
into the matters surrounding the production, while the handful
of promotional still presented as an 'image gallery' is laughably
redundant. In the current market, this release is nothing
short of an insult to the serious DVD collector and to this
movie's many fans, especially considering the outstanding
release that is readily available in other countries.The
animated menus from the American/British Special Edition release
have been re-used for this DVD, though the navigational text has
been modified amateurishly to strip down the options to a bare
few.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
July 16, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on True
Romance.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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