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  Directed by
  Starring
  Specs
  • Widescreen 2.35:1
  • 16:9 Enhanced
  Languages
  • English: Dolby Digital Surround
  Subtitles
  • None
  Extras
  • Theatrical trailer
  • Cast/crew biographies
  • Featurette

True Romance

Roadshow Entertainment/Roadshow Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 116 mins . R . PAL

  Feature
Contract

Penned by the hand of screenplay guru Quentin Tarantino, True Romance is one of those 'on-the-cards' scripts that he had written before he hit the big time with Pulp Fiction. Using the same dialogue intense drama with that splash of black humor, True Romance attempts to capture the essence of a somewhat useless existence and the events that can literally recharge a life.

Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) is just your everyday comic book running clerk who's life is on the fast track to nowhere. Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) is the lucious call girl hired by a friend of Clarences to treat him to a very personal birthday present. Needless to say, they literally fall in love overnight and Alamaba decides to end her few days of the high life.

To do so, she needs to end all ties with her pimp Drexl (Gary Oldman) and asks Clarence to go get her stuff. He does 'end' all her ties with Drexl, he does get a suitcase of stuff and he does leave some ID behind. The problem is, the stuff he got is actually $500,000 worth of Coca COla and he now has a few irate italian mobsters on his tail. The only way to get rid of Dr Shivago is to sell it to a b-grade film director for a measly $200,000.

Needless to say, the italians catch up with them, and so do the feds who have been on their trail. With an ending to rival any gun-fights of recent years, this is sure to please.

  Video
Contract

You can always expect a certain level of quality but sometimes you have to accept the fact that you can only squeeze so much juice out of the fruit you are handed. What we have here is a decent looking film with a decent transfer. It would have been nice to spread this 2 hour movie across 2 layers and up the bit rate but the quality extracted obviously didn't need anymore room to breathe.

What you'll notice is a not so black image and a not so vibrant image that lacks any dynamic intensity. I can almost put it down to the film itself. It seems gritty and dirty at times and I doubt any amount of digital enhancing could do the image justice without being a detriment to the image itself.

So far this is the only anamorphic print of this movie out there so I doubt you're going to find a better picture.

  Audio
Contract

Surprisingly, for a 2 channel surround track, it was pretty lively in some cases. There is definite channel seperation across the front stereo sound stage which contains a very clear dialogue out of the center channel.

Surround wise, there are passages that delight particularly the rollercoaster scene that uses the surrounds to good effect. Bass wise there is a decent helping that should satisfy.

Be prepared for a little harshness in the final shoot-out though as a compressed dolby digital 2 channel soundtrack cannot do the dynamic range reached real justice.

  Extras
Contract

A Pulp Fiction like bundle of extras.

  • Audio menus - with some nice ambient music and sound clips from the movie when selecting a chapter
  • Special Featurette - Just over 7 minutes of promotional material with quick interviews thrown in for the usual good measure.
  • Biographies - quick tidbits on the key players of the movie.
  • Theatrical Trailer - you guessed it.
  • Tarantino Recommendations - 2 more trailers of Pulp Fiction and jackie Brown.
  • Trivia - A quick one page trivia section mainly focused on the ending of the movie and how TOny Scott and Tarantino disagreed.
  • Dolby Temple Trailer - You may not have seen this dolby trailer as it's not very common at all. It was selected by VR because it only has a 2 channel surround audio track which matches the soundtrack of the movie.
As always, VR present the entire disc 16x9 enhanced which is their biggest feature by far.

  Overall  
Contract

I have always liked this movie ever since first seeing it in theatres. It's not Pulp Fiction but there are some truly great scenes in the movie that give it real character aswell as giving us a real urge to feel for our heroes.

Highly recommended.


  • LINK: http://www.dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=199
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      And I quote...
    ""
    - Steve Koukoulas
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Player:
          Pioneer DV-505 Gold
    • TV:
          Hitachi CMT2979 68cm
    • Receiver:
          Yamaha RX-V595
    • Speakers:
          Peterson Labs 100Watts
    • Centre Speaker:
          Sherwood SC-60E
    • Surrounds:
          Sherwood LS-502
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          standard s-video
      Recent Reviews:
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