True Romance (1993)

Let me apologize for my lengthy absence from the blogging scene. I've been out of the country on various adventures. I have now returned and am back on task with my Kilmer viewing mission. I have to say, however, that while I enjoyed "True Romance" a great deal, there is not much to report on the Kilmer front. In fact, Kilmer is probably in the movie for less than two and a half minutes.

"True Romance," for the uninitiated, was written by Quinton Tarentino and the dialogue is accordingly awesome. It begins with now faded actor Christian Slater chatting up some blond at a bar during the middle of the afternoon. He's going on and on about how amazing Elvis Presley is and ends up getting shot down by the girl when he tries to ask her out. Through some weird circumstances involving a friend setting him up with a call girl on his birthday and their subsequent declaration of mutual love, the story takes what almost looks like a cheesey twist. BUT, then Val Kilmer, as a faceless sequin jumpsuit wearing southerner who is strongly implied to be Elvis, makes an appearance as a hallucination only seen by Christian Slater that basically tells him to go kill the Alabama's former pimp. Things rapidly get crazier after that culminating in one of the strangest shootout scenes I've ever seen.

It's hard to analyze Kilmer's performance here. He keeps an accent and everything but you never see more of his face than his snarled lip. I guess it's a pretty good Elvis. Good enough for a hallucination anyway. Part of me thinks it would be pretty great to have Val Kilmer appear as Elvis in a hallucination where he tells me things to help me morally justify poor decisions.

What I found surprising about "True Romance" was the huge number of actors who are still considered big movie stars in 2009. Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini, and to a lesser extent Gary Oldman, Tom Sizemore (very much pre-meltdown), Dennis Hopper, Patricia Arquette and Michael Rapaport are all in this movie to some degree. Still, it's a sign of the draw that Val Kilmer had in 1993 that his EXTREMELY limited role in this received almost top billing in the credits.