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THE OMEGA MAN (1971)

Not much to say here  - another Heston-at-the-end-of-the-world thought provoker; it was very different than I expected, but a very interesting movie.  I liked Boris Sagal's pacing and the very un-modern-Hollywood like ending.  Also, I think having the first 30 minutes of a 98 minute movie with only the leading actor on-screen a stroke of genius, especially when he's driving fast cars, shooting machine guns and talking to himself.

TRUE ROMANCE, Director's Cut (1993)

Violent. Profane.  Good Movie.

The combination of Tarantino and Scott, plus of course an incredible acting cast, really works for this one.  Oh, you can tell Tarantino's hand was all over it.  But this is basically a 'love story' with killing.  The best kind, in a lot of ways.

I laughed out loud when the little baggie of coke burst on Bronson Pinchot's face...you could just TELL the chick with him smirked and thought "what a LOSER."  For my money, that lady did one of the best acting jobs in the whole film in that one little scene, capturing her total disdain for that character.  What a way to give Pinchot's character that third dimension that seems to give Hollywood so much trouble these days.

I love character driven stories more than action driven ones - to me they are so much more interesting.  Though Christian Slater's character was more than reminiscent to Hard Harry in PUMP UP THE VOLUME, I have to confess I think he plays the "slightly crazy normal guy" to a T.   With very little screen time, we come to like, no, really care about, Dennis Hopper's Clifford.  My wife's favorite character was Floyd, and I'm still trying to figure out the significance of that.  Walken and Oldman were great, as usual.  Arquette was sweet as Alabama; innocent in a way, but not totally naive either.  Good strong characters, properly developed and played by strong actors.  I bet Tony Scott had an orgasm when he learned the cast he was going to have.

All I can say after watching this is "How did I miss it for 13 years?"  I never heard of it, if you can believe that.  I was browsing Netflix one day, looking for stuff my wife might like, so it (with Patricia Arquette, the lady in NBC's "Medium" and Christian Slater in a mob-esque romance story) caught my eye.  I must have been living under a box.

I give it 4 out of 5, with the only negatives I can think of is that I never figured out why Christopher Walken never appeared again and found his absence a bit distracting, and I found the whole mob back story given by Hopper's character a bit confusing (who was who, and how were they connected ??).

I own the Director's Cut of True Romance with 2 discs.

I first saw this film way back in 1993 when it first came out and it blew me away.
The director's cut expands the story greatly.

Look for Samuel L. Jackson in an extended cameo as the drug dealer murdered by Drexel.
And Clarence shoots Drexel like 3 times in the face instead of once.

Christopher Walken & Hopper's scene is the best.
Their dialogue is widely considered the best scene in the film.

The scene where James Gandolfini's character beats Alabama is much more intense.
He beats her so badly...it's much harder to watch than the regular cut.
That beating scene goes on for nearly 10 minutes in the director's cut.

And in the original ending, Clarence dies from that gunshot wound to the head and Alabama makes off with the money.

It's great because it has a ton of extras and 3 commentary tracks.
Track 1 is Christian Slater & Patricia Arquette.
Track 2 is Tony Scott
And best of all is track 3 with Tarantino himself giving amusing commentary.

Omega Man - Great flick.  Love the over-the-topness of it and Heston's work is great here.  It doesn't really do justice to Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" though.  If you enjoyed it, check out Vincent Price's Last Man On Earth for another take on the story.

True Romance - One of my favorites.  I had heard of the film for years and eventually caught it on some premium cable channel a few years back.  At first I was amazed at the cast, and then floored when I saw Tarantino's name in the writing credits.  This was actually the first film to get me into Sonny Chiba's work, due to the scene with Clarence and Alabama in the theater.

I now have just the standard DVD version.  I can't imagine the alternate ending with Clarence dying at the end.  The film always seemed like a modern fairy tale to me.  Loser/geek meets hot hooker, they fall in love, a huge opportunity lands in front of them, etc.  I rather like the fact that they survive in the end.  I love the final shot of them on the beach.

Here's some random information that really doesn't have much to do with the film....  Watch Reservoir Dogs again, and there is a scene where Joe Cabot (Lawerence Tierney) is telling Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) about the heist and he asks if White is still with Alabama.  He tells him no, that she left him a few months before....

Yeah, it was the director's cut that I saw (original post edited to reflect that).  That Gandolfini-Arquette scene WAS intense, and I cannot imagine how much 'weaker' the movie would have been at the end without that intensity.

Man, one thing about that movie is you CARED about the characters, flaws and all.  You just don't see that that often.  IMO, great direction, great acting.

Like Omega Man for what it was, very 70s ending. Agree it would unlikely for a studio to have that ending in a big budget movie with a big name star these days. Having since read the Matheson source material, I'd still like to see a straight adaptation rather than the attempted remake of Omega Man that has had names like Will Smith and Arnold attached to it.

I was underwhelmed by True Romance at the time, but I have't seen the Director's Cut. Some good moments (Walken and Hopper, but everyone says that, and Val Kilmer as Elvis) but the main plot and characters left me cold. Arquette just seemed to scream a lot or zone out to me, but she did the same thing in "The Indian Runner" which I saw around the same time. Slater wasn't doing those awful Nicholson imitations he used to call acting but still didn't impress me. Maybe I should give the director's cut a shot, but Tony Scott's more recent incoherent visual crapfests have soured me on his stuff.

Concerning QT films and interconnection. I also like the mentions of the Vega Bros. in Reservoir Dogs and Vincent Vega turning up in Pulp Fiction. Or Michael Keaton's character from Jackie Brown turning up in Out of Sight (not a QT film actually) and the uncredited cameo by Sam Jackson (a QT staple). A nice mixing of Tarantino's "universe" and the universe of Elmore Leonard books.