This weeks Movie Guns is on the film True Romance staring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette. The gist of the movie is that Clarence (Christian Slater) meets call girl Alabama (Patricia Arquette) and they fall in love, steal drugs, kill mobsters, and have a few laughs along the way. It's a great story line. Here's the details:
Clarence and Alabama decide to spend the rest of their lives together, but Clarence is pretty bummed out about Alabama's pimp's existence in the world. Clarence is periodically given advice from an apparition of Elvis Presley, and the first time we see him he tells Clarence to kill the pimp. Clarence takes a S&W Model 686 Plus (7-shot) and stuffs it in his sock before heading over to Drexl the pimp's house (Gary Oldman).
Drexl is busy killing some drug dealers who come over to sell him some cocain. He uses this Ithaca 'stakeout' model shotgun to kill both the drug dealers:
Then one of his minions loads the cocain back in the suitcase, and you get a glimpse of a Desert Eagle:
Clarence shows up and pretty much picks a fight with Drexl, who promptly kicks Clarences ass, who then pulls his S&W Model 686 and blows Drexl's manhood to little pieces before putting a few rounds in his chest:
Yeah, OW!! - and not just Drexl's balls; look at the way Clarence is holding that gun. Pulling the trigger on a short barreled .357 Magnum with a grip like that would be very painfull, but you can't really blame him because he was fighting with Drexl on the ground and didn't have the time to get a kung-fu grip. During the fight he fires 7 rounds without re-loading. Clarence then grabs a suitcase that he believes is full of Alabama's things, but instead contains over a million dollars worth of uncut cocain that belongs to some Sicilian mobsters.
Free'd of the pimp, Clarence takes Alabama to meet his father, Clifford (Dennis Hopper), who is a former cop, and has connections to find out if Clarence has any detectives looking for him for the shooting. After they leave, the mobsters who own the drugs show up at Clifford's house to find Clarence's whereabouts.
One of the thugs points a Beretta Inox at Clifford's head when he walks in the door, then they torture Clifford with a CCC balisong, which doesn't yeild any information:
I won't give it away, but next is great dialog between Clifford and Sicilian mob boss Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken). The script seems almost like it's done from the hip pocket; that is, like it's improv, and both of them are top notch actors.
Coccotti pulls a H&K P7M13 pistol and kills Clifford:
Later, Clarence drops Alabama off at a hotel and heads out for some burgers. Alabama walks into the hotel room and mobster hitman Virgil (James Gandolfini) is waiting for her with a short barreled Remington 870:
This is a very violent scene, but a good one. Virgil beats the snot out of Alabama, but finds out that she can dish it out as well as she can take it. When he goes to shoot her with a S&W Model 629, she sets him on fire with a can of hairspray and a Bic lighter, and then finishes him off with his own shotgun:
Clarence walks in with his S&W, and takes Alabama and the cocain out to the car:
They go to visit their friend Dick (Michael Rapaport), who hooks them up with a movie producer via a surrogate, Elliot (Bronson Pinchot), who wants to buy the cocain. Elliot gets caught by the cops with a sample of the cocain in his car, and agrees with the cops to wear a wire to the final drug deal in order to avoid a lengthy jail sentence. The mobsters find out where the drug deal is going down and gear up for a firefight by loading a bunch of guns in a hotel. Here, one of the mobsters has a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle on his end table:
The bed is covered in guns and ammo:
Looking closer shows a S&W Model 36, a couple of Beretta 92F magazines, and a bunch of shotgun shells with struck primers:
For some reason, after the thugs finish loading the weapons, they stuff all of it loose in a gym bag to transport it to the location of the firefight:
+4 for one of the thugs loading a shotgun correctly: by pulling the slide on the pistol gripped Remington 870 back, dropping a shell into the ejection port, jacking the slide forward, and then loading the rest of the shells into the loading gate:
-5 for racking the slide later on in order to intimidate a pothead when it is obvious that the gun is empty:
The cops are preparing for what they think is gonna be a major drug bust by loading their weapons like this Beretta 92F:
That same cop was seen earlier with a snubby revolver, probably a S&W, in a straight holster that he was using as a crossdraw holster, although he has it way too far to the left on his belt for it to be useful:
Clarence checks the rounds in his trusty 686P, and then stuffs it into his waistband, at which point Dick asks him why he brought a gun. Clarence responds correctly that "I learned a long time ago that it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have one." Sound advice, and notice the Pachmayr grips:
When Clarence, Alabama, and Dick are in the elevator with Elliot, Clarence pulls his gun on him to try to find out if Elliot is going to double cross him:
All seems well and they enter the room to meet the movie producer Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek). Clarence doesn't know that Elliot is wearing a wire, and that cops are monitoring the room and prepared to bust in at any moment; nor does he know that the Sicilian mob is about to come through the door with some serious firepower. Lee has two bodyguards who are armed with an H&K MP5PDW and a UZI, and neither of them knows how to use the sights:
This would be why dumb-ass politicians think that automatic weapons are dangerous. They can be "hip fired" doncha know!!
At one point, Lee is being 'friendly' with Clarence by pulling the S&W out of Clarence's waistband and pointing it at him:
Safety violator!
When the deal goes down, the cops bust into the room, and one of them, Officer Dimes (Chris Penn), is holding a Beretta 92F in the classic "I've-never-held-a-gun-before" type Hollywoood grip:
His support hand is grabbing his wrist. He'll never get any work done like that. Officer Nicholson (Tom Sizemore) does a better job.
None of the other 'cops' are any better, with these guys not really even using their support hands or even bothering to bring the weapon up to eye level:
When the mobsters bust in a firefight starts, with every man for himself. Clarence is in the bathroom talking to Elvis and misses the whole thing. Nobody is using any cover that is worth a damn; the mobsters at least take refuge behind a couch, not that it can stop anything. Some other cops are trying to get into the fight and can be seen outside an elevator with snubbies in hand:
Here is Dimes flinching badly with his eyes closed while still holding that Beretta with one hand:
His partner is firing two guns: one of them is a Beretta 92F, the other is a S&W Model 49 Bodyguard:
When the shooting stops, the last man standing is Dimes, who walks over to one of Lee's body guards and finishes him off. Clarence got hit when he walked out of the bathroom, and Alabama picks up his gun and kills Dimes, thus ending the fight:
Well, that's all for tonight. If you have somehow missed this movie, you should seriously consider picking it up one night. The story line is great, the actors are top notch, and the revolvers can't be missed. Go ahead, you owe it to yourself.
3 comments:
I think Drevel was armed with a S&W model 25 with a short barrel (not sure of the exact model but it was in 45 ACP). If you look at the cylinder you see how short it is in length and that it is definitely not a .357.
Also, I think Christopher Walken's gun was a P7M10 in 40 S&W. You can tell by the massiveness of the slide
Good post, as always!
James
Thank you for a great review!
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