Nothing like falling in love to ‘True Romance’

My “top ten” movie list must have 75 entries by now. This week, I added “True Romance.”

There are about 30 reasons for the addition, but it was mostly Dennis Hopper, with assists from Christopher Walken and Elvis, all aided by the magic of Netflix.

If you haven’t seen this (you must), it all involves Clarence (Christian Slater), the comic book store clerk who, with Elvis (Val Kilmer) as his adviser, shoots a pimp and rescues Alabama, a delicious hooker (Patricia Arquette). He gets Alabama on purpose and a suitcase full of cocaine by mistake.

Unfortunately for Clarence, the magic powder belongs to an Italian crime organization. They want it back, passionately.

The Mafia traces Clarence through superior intelligence, aided by the fact that Slater left his driver’s license in the dead pimp’s hands. The trace leads to a delightfully decadent trailer close by the Detroit railroad tracks owned by Clarence’s estranged father, Cliff, played by the aforementioned Hopper.

They club Cliff and tie him into a chair, warming up for the torture to find out where the son – and the cocaine – has gone.

Now Cliff, an ex-cop, knows that his life is over. But he wants to protect his son, Clarence, at all costs. His only way out is to make Vince, the mob boss (Walken), so mad that he will kill quickly and relatively mercifully.

In one of the best scenes of all movie time (honest), Cliff asks for a last cigarette and takes the mob crew on a historic cruise. He reminds the well-armed crew that Sicilians were all blond-haired and light-skinned until they were invaded by the Moors on their short trip from Africa.

Cliff tells the crew that all of their mothers had sex with the Moors and that they were, thus, all Africans. He used a slightly less polite term. You have to know a Sicilian to understand the rage that flowed through Vince’s veins. He grabbed a gun and shot Cliff at least a hundred times.

Vince would have lost all that valuable information about Clarence’s location, that is, if Clarence hadn’t left his new California address on the trailer’s fridge.

Priceless.

This movie has an all star cast.

Part of the mob goes to California to find stoner roommate Floyd, played by newcomer Brad Pitt, barely recognizable through his wreath of pot smoke.

Part of the mob goes to the motel room where Alabama gets in a truly brutal, bloody death match with none other than James Gandolfini, today known as Tony Soprano. Imagine Tony losing a battle with a teen-age hooker? (Oops! Did I give that away?)

The movie ends in a shoot-out so violent that it seems a parody, a Marx Brothers look at murder.

By then, you are so immune to the violence that it doesn’t even bother you, except when our hero, Clarence, gets shot in the head.

I won’t give away the ending. But not everyone dies in the shootout. Almost everybody, but not everybody.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times loved “True Romance,” too. She calls the movie “a movie-mad fairy tale with a body count for modern times.” That’s why she works for the Times. She also said it presented “a super-hip white villains Hall of Fame.”

Incidental shootings are Gary Oldman, Chris Penn, Gandolfini, even Bronson Pinchot. Samuel Jackson dies in the first minute.

The movie was directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino also did the ultraviolent “Reservoir Dogs,” then “Pulp Fiction,” which is also on my expanded top ten list.

I must now look for a suitable follow-up to “True Romance” on Netflix.

I just checked. I have rated 636 movies on Netflix and I actually have 303 movies in my order list, or queue.

I think I have too much time on my hands.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.