i rewatched True Romance last night, one of my all time favorite movies, and for the first time noti

i rewatched True Romance last night, one of my all time favorite movies, and for the first time noticed some of the Blade Runner homages, possibly Tony Scott’s hat tip to his brother.  this movie deserves a more thorough post but i will mention that the reason i downloaded and watched it again is that we were talking about how extraordinarily shallow and empty Drive was, despite being a really beautiful piece of moviemaking.  Drive very much wants to be True Romance–or on par with True Romance in the genre they share–and to me there is no better comparison between the two than Drive’s slaughter of Hendricks’ “bad girl” redhead in a hotel bathroom (also by a thug with a shotgun), vs True Romance’s Arquette vs. Gandolfini showdown, also in the hotel bathroom.  Drive’s scene is over in two seconds, and follows within a minute of the supposedly sympathetic male lead making vaguely sexual threats of violence towards the victim, and physically overpowering her just for the sake of domination, a woman who has done nothing to him but be sluttier and more “bad” than his blonde, madonna-complex girlfriend.compare this to watching the character of Alabama (Patricia Arquette),–an actual sex worker–field, misdirect, stupefy and ultimately kill in self defense, a shotgun-carrying mafia hitman who is at least twice her size.  her husband doesn’t get back to the room until well afterwards; she does EVERYTHING by herself.  in comparison, Hendricks’ character’s quick and ignoble murder seems like a halfassed, “sluts have it coming” sort of afterthought, just some gore to splash on the wall to make the scene more “serious” for the badass.  neither she (the Whore) nor the blonde love interest (the Madonna) are human beings, nor is anyone else in the film.but in True Romance, everyone you meet is real. you give a shit about what happens to them, whether they win or lose, whether they suffer, and whose blood they have on their hands. -- source link

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