Plot
In Detroit, a young comic shop assistant, Clarence (Christian Slater) meets a call girl, Alabama (Patricia Arquette) and they instantly fall in love and get married. On the advice of Clarence's mentor, a gold-jacketed Elvis (Val Kilmer), the former seeks out Alabama's pimp (Gary Oldman) and kills him, taking a suitcase which he mistakenly believes to be Alabama's. The suitcase however turns out to hold a large amount of uncut cocaine. The young couple decide to take advantage of the situation and leave in Clarence's purple Cadillac convertible for Los Angeles to sell the haul. En route, they drop in on Clarence's estranged father (Dennis Hopper) and leave him their address. Meanwhile, hot on the young couple's tail is a gang of Sicilians. These mobsters headed by Vincenzo Coccotti (Walken) torture and kill Clarence's father in an attempt to extract information from him.
In LA, Clarence with the aid of a friend sets up a meeting with a big Hollywood producer to sell the drugs. After an extravagant shootout involving the police, the producer's bodyguards and the gangsters, the young lovers, through sheer force of their feckless naiveté, escape with the money and flee to Mexico where they live happily ever after.
Comments on DVD extras
I didn't expect to like this film, but actually found it rather entertaining. The film directed by Tony Scott and scripted by Tarantino, showcases all the familiar Tarantino trademarks: frequent and bloody violence, a plethora of hip pop-culture references, play with the stylistics of film genre, long and intricate dialogues and fragmented and hectic plot development. The special edition of the film available in Regions 1 and 2 DVD format includes an impressive array of extras, attesting to the fact that this film has developed a major following over the years. Numerous remarks in the commentary point to an obsessive attention to detail by the viewers - always one of the hallmarks of cult status. It is a cult status, which as Brad Pitt and others have remarked, owes more than a little to the adolescent male fantasy wish fulfillment elements of the story.
There are no less than four separate commentaries on the most famous scene in the film, the so-called 'Sicilian scene' which features Walken and Hopper at the top of their form in a riveting and intense confrontation between mob boss Coccotti and Clarence's father. The DVD also includes a deleted scene featuring Coccotti and his gangster cronies. This scene which was not included for reasons of time is better than some that were included in the final cut. It features a striking play and movement of light over the actors' faces as they travel down in a cage lift in an old building, discussing the loss of their drugs. Walken, as ever, manages to make lines which might sound unremarkable delivered by somebody else, become confrontingly and excruciatingly descriptive. ('Children, someone's sticking a red hot poker up my asshole, and what I don't know is whose hand's on the handle.')
Also of interest in the extras included in this special edition, is an alternative ending with explanatory commentaries from both the director and the writer. The ending was famously the subject of some disagreement between Tarantino and Scott, with Tarantino favouring an ending where his hero dies and Scott favouring an ending where the young couple escape and live happily ever after. Tarantino was concerned that Scott's version was too much of a 'Hollywood ending', but it is in fact Tarantino's ending which is conventional. The moral status quo is depressingly reasserted with wrong doers, no matter how pathetic or sympathetic, being punished according to their socially designated desserts and victims remaining victims. Clarence does not get away with murder - he who lives by the sword dies by the sword - and Alabama one of life's victims at the beginning of the movie is at the end, once again, a victim cast away on the unpredictable seas of life. This is completely in line with formula expectations. Scott's version however is far more subversive. It draws attention to the fact that what we are watching is a complete fiction - this is a film which plays with and parodies movie and narrative genre, it is not a representation of 'reality'. The ending reinforces the notion that the excessive violence in the film is about cinema and narrative conventions - not to be taken seriously. Admittedly these observations are probably more obvious when one views Scott's ending side by side with Tarantino's. One sees a similar disjunction in the way the studio and director's cut deal with the endings in Wild Side. The American studio cut sees the gangster Bruno Buckingham caught by the law and hints at a similar fate for the two female protagonists. The later (non-American) director's cut sees all parties get away with it.
Tony Scott's direction
Tony Scott's direction, although he has been castigated for importing his advertising background, demonstrates some nice touches. As is frequently the case, it is often non-American directors who provide the most interesting visions of American urban landscapes. (I am thinking here of Peter Weir's cinematic point of view in Witness for example, although a notable exception to this rule is American film produced during the 1970s.) Scott shows Detroit as an urban wasteland with rusting hulks of cars decaying by the roadside under a gentle covering of snow. The caravans parked beside the railway reinforce this vision of a bleak and rotting landscape. In LA, we see brief glimpses of palms against a background of smog and choked highways. All of this is shown in brightly-lit clear colours which in combination with racy cutting provides a kind of ironic contrast between the decay and the cheery advertising gloss.
The lighting in the two scenes featuring Walken also adds enormously to the power of these scenes. In the confrontation between the Vincenzo Coccotti and Clarence's father, the harsh light beating down on the latter, simultaneously emphasises his working class cragginess, adds a kind of Christ-like dimension to the character and hints at the spotlight of interrogation methods. Conversely, Cocotti is the smoothly elegant man in the shadows - replete with the dark menace of the enforcer behind the scenes. The choice and placement of the music in this scene also adds to its force. The deleted scene which takes place in a cage lift - features a remarkable play and movement of light over Cocotti's impassive face as he plots with his gangster cronies. In general, the bright colours and bright lighting of much of the film (with a few notable exceptions - for example, the scenes with Walken) emphasise the comic book dimensions of the adventures of the hapless lovers and their irresponsible attitude to the trail of destruction they leave behind them. We cannot take it all too seriously.
Other cameo performances
Brad Pitt provides a most entertaining cameo as a stoner, cheerfully bonging away as, blissfully unaware, he betrays his friends, thus aiding and abetting in the escalation of violence. This is also the first appearance of James Gandolfini in a major film, providing a suitably bloody preview of things to come in The Sopranos. Although Gary Oldman's performance in this film has its enthusiastic admirers, I found it the least convincing in its sheer over the top unpleasantness. Nonetheless, one cannot help but laugh at a character so evil, that not only does he blow away his friends without warning, but he executes their dog as well.
Walken essentials
Salute to Broadway: none in evidence
Hair: Slicked back smooth gangster style.
Thanks
I would like to thank Matt Dillon, Jason Evans and Bruce Mitchell for their discussion in relation to this film.
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