directed by Tony Scott
written by Quentin Tarantino
Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) meet and fall in love on his birthday at a triple feature of Sonny Chiba movies. They get married. He works at a comic book shop. She is a call girl. He decides, after talking to his imaginary mentor, Elvis Presley (Val Kilmer), that he needs to kill Drexl (Gary Oldman), her pimp. He grabs her belongings after killing Drexl but by accident Clarence leaves his driver's license behind and grabs a suitcase filled with cocaine instead of Alabama's clothes.
Clarence and Alabama and head to Los Angeles. They are unaware that the mob is on their tail and wants the cocaine back. The happy couple arranges a meeting with a Hollywood producer to whom they hope to sell the cocaine. Elliot (Bronson Pinchot), the producer's assistant, gets caught by the cops. He is afraid of serving time in prison for possession of cocaine so he tells the police about the planned meeting.
Clarence, Alabama, the producer, Elliott, the cops, and the mob all converge at the meeting. The deal does not go down as Clarence and Alabama wanted it to. Lots of shots are fired. Lots of people wind up dead.
It didn't occur to me until just before I sat down to watch this movie that I was watching it two days before Valentine's Day. I didn't plan it that way but it seems very appropriate even though it is heavier on violence than it is on romance.
I saw this movie once before in the 1990s. I remembered bits and pieces of it but not very much.
There are a lot of known actors, mostly men, who show up briefly in this movie. I remembered some of them were in it but not most of them. Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Rapaport, James Gandolfini, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore.
Val Kilmer character is called Mentor in the credits even though it is clearly supposed to be Elvis Presley.
I enjoyed watching this movie. It has its moments but it is not brilliant. The lead actors did not impress me terribly. They weren't awful I just wasn't all that impressed by their performances. It was the little bit parts that added up to make this a fun watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment