'True Romance' tells me more about Quentin Tarantino than love

I've always thought I hated True Romance.

The first time I saw it I was so repulsed by an extended violent sequence where Patricia Arquette's character 'Alabama' gets beaten by a thug played by James Gandolfini that I had to turn the movie off and take a breather before coming back to it.

The second time I saw it I found myself totally turned off by the self-referential, incredibly unrealistic nature of Quentin Tarantino's script. I am a huge Tarantino fan but, to me, he is the Kanye West of filmmakers -- seemingly not-self-aware to an absurd degree. He has no qualms about trumpeting his own brilliance, especially in the screenwriting department.

The movie also felt redundant to me -- we've all seen a ton of doomed couple-on-the-run movies. Even the film's opening score seems like a deliberate rip-off of Terrence Malick's far superior film Badlands. And this movie can't hold a candle to Wild at Heart or Bonnie and Clyde.

But this time I got it. The movie is meant to be both a rip-off and an homage, and even though Tarantino didn't direct the film (the late Tony Scott did), it's in a way his most personal and revealing film because it unabashedly revels in his fanboy obsessions (from comic books to Sonny Chiba kung fu movies) without any detachment or irony. If you want to hear Doctor Zhivago and Charles Bronson name-checked for no reason, this is the movie for you.

In a weird way, I've come to appreciate this more after recently viewing what I have come to believe is Tarantino's most underrated movie, Jackie Brown. An interesting attempt to show maturity and range, that 1997 movie proved that Tarantino is capable of writing plausible, sympathetic characters who are older than him, who have a different socio-economic experience than him and who operate in a world he could never be a part of. It's a remarkable feat, and so entertaining that I can forgive his predilection for over-using the n-word.

True Romance makes no effort to be accessible in that way. It feels like a story Tarantino had been cooking up for years and its full of these little vignettes that he obviously stuffed in out of sheer exuberance. One of the flaws of the movie is it routinely introduces and dispatches some its most interesting characters. It's overstuffed, it's over-stylized and yet it is definitely not boring.

Take for instance one of the most famous scenes in the film, and the one I loved even after my first viewing of the movie. Christopher Walken plays a Cicilian mobster terrorizing and interrogating Dennis Hopper, who plays Christian Slater's blue collar beat cop dad. The taboo topic of racial mixing and African ancestry comes up and the byplay between these two legendary character actors is sublime. Tarantino has always had a preoccupation with race, but it's a curious, sincere interest -- he doesn't seem to want to just culturally appropriate (which is why the pseudo-white homeboy character played by Gary Oldman in True Romance is clearly a figure to be ridiculed). He seems both attracted to and in awe of black swagger.

Pam Grier in Jackie Brown

This has never been pronounced than in Jackie Brown, although Django Unchained certainly has a strong badass heart to it as well. The movie was marketed as a throwback blaxploitation film, but it's really a tribute to the prodigious talents of Pam Grier. Tarantino, self-servingly, has patted himself on the back for having the guts to cast her in a lead role.

And yet, he did do a phenomenal thing by launching a newfound cultural awareness of this black American icon. And he wrote a terrific role for her, at turns sexy and scared, strong and weathered. Grier was robbed of an Academy Award nomination that year. I can't even remember who ultimately won the Oscar which speaks volumes about the '97 field.

Still, it's not a movie of depth. In fact, I would argue none of Tarantino's movies are. They're just some of the most wildly entertaining movies I've ever seen. Although I must admit I don't recall ever having a profound emotional response to any of them. That's not necessarily a good or a bad thing. Although I do wonder if he is capable of making a movie that could move or touch me.

True Romance is easily his most superficial confection. Even the Kill Bill movies had the concept of Uma Thurman's heroic Bride reuniting with her estranged daughter. There is nothing this movie has to offer in terms of insight or human interaction. It's pure kinetic violence and script-writing flights of fancy from start to finish.

Like every film buff, I am eagerly anticipating Tarantino's next opus, the Western movie The Hateful Eight. I am sure it will be a rollicking good time, violent, profane and amusing as hell. But I am very curious if it will show the emotional resonance glimpsed every so briefly in the Melanie Laurent character from Inglourious Basterds. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime I will continue to appreciate his pop culture obsessed wonderland, populated with a colorful rogue's gallery or weirdos and sociopaths. There's no one else like him in the movies -- and that's what I love about him most.

Oh, and Helen Hunt won. Talk among yourselves.