Quentin Tarantino established himself as one of Hollywood's leading directors throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Known for his over-the-top action sequences, aversion to digital camera work, and signature style of dialogue, the actor is responsible for many of the most iconic films of the last thirty years. However, despite his excellent work behind the camera, one of his best stories is one that he didn't actually direct.

Quentin Tarantino's career has proven him one of Hollywood's most talented figures, and he has taken on the role of actor, director, writer, producer, and more. Like many of the film industry's best creators, Tarantino has left a diverse legacy behind him and isn't always the director of his own stories. In the 1990s, the Pulp Fiction director partnered with another prolific film legend, Tony Scott, to write a brilliant crime story of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Despite its brilliance, this crime thriller continues to go overlooked in the careers of both men. In reality, it's actually one of Tarantino's best scripts, as well as one of Scott's best works from behind the camera.

How Quentin Tarantino Took Hollywood By Storm

In 1992, Quentin Tarantino instantly cemented his reputation as a trailblazing director, shaking off the standards and expectations of cinema with Reservoir Dogs. Despite being billed as a heist movie, the film is actually anything but. Instead, it explores its characters after the robbery as each man deals with the aftermath of a disastrous job. From the film's opening conversation, audiences knew they had something that went well beyond the standard crime movies of the '80s and '90s. Shirking off every crime cliché for entertaining, relatable, and interesting characters and sidelining the actual heist, the director made sure he'd stand out well into the future. From crime to Westerns, he went on to leave an indelible mark on almost every genre of film.

Quentin Tarantino continued to take Hollywood by storm into the 1990s and 2000s, with 1994's Pulp Fiction standing out as a film that truly helped define an entire era of cinema. Thanks to its meteoric success and quotable script, directors and screenwriters started to emulate his style. By the late '90s, the film industry veered off into a grittier direction, borrowing Tarantino's relatable dialogue and out-of-sequence plots. This was aided by one of the director's best-written films, with the aid of Tony Scott behind the camera. That film was 1993's True Romance, an unlikely combination of crime, comedy, romance, and drama.

While many of Tarantino's best movies come from his 21st-century blockbusters -- with films like Kill Bill and Django Unchained raising the bar for their genres -- his '90s work remains his most influential. His prowess didn't end with his camera work, and True Romance stands out as a testament to just how great the director is at writing both stories and dialogue. The original script was actually sold by Tarantino to fund his production of Reservoir Dogs, ensuring he had two movies under his belt in as many years. His subsequent success with Pulp Fiction turned him into Hollywood gold, and his career has since become one of the film industry's most successful.

Tarantino Penned This Drug-Fuelled Romantic Thriller

After directing Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino penned the script for the 1993 crime movie, True Romance. The film follows two young lovers; an Elvis-crazed movie buff, Clarence Worley, and a call-girl, Alabama, who falls in love with her client after being hired by his boss for his birthday. After proclaiming their love for one another, the escort tells her new flame about her pimp, a violent and unstable man by the name of Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman). To free his girl, the smitten young man confronts the gangster and is forced to kill him when things take a bad turn. On his way out, he finds and steals a briefcase full of cocaine, which Spivey himself stole from a pair of drug dealers. After explaining the situation to Alabama, the pair set off for California, where they figure they'll be able to sell the drugs, make a small fortune, and begin their life together.

The couple's journey begins with a visit to Clarence's father, Clifford, a retired cop who looks into the case and tells them that they're in the clear. However, unbeknownst to them, Drexl had stolen the drugs on behalf of a mob boss, Blue Lou Boyle, and deployed his consigliere, Vincenzo Coccotti, to recover them. No sooner than the couple depart Clifford's home does Coccotti arrive, henchmen at his side, and interrogate the retired cop for the location of his son. After the retiree goads his captors into killing him, the criminals pursue the newlyweds to Los Angeles, where they get caught up in a drug bust, culminating in a shootout between the LAPD and mobsters -- with Clarence caught in the crossfire.

Tarantino followed in the footsteps of countless directors who turned out some of their best works through scripts, rather than camerawork. Creators like Shane Black, John Landis, George Lucas, and Michael Bay are among the many who wrote screenplays for films that were handed off to other directors. Some of the best and most iconic films in history were penned by one director but made by another. Thus, it's no surprise that one of Tarantino's best works would be thanks to his script in the hands of someone who, at that time, was already established as a leading director, thanks to Top Gun and The Last Boy Scout.

True Romance Feels Like A More Focused Pulp Fiction

Of all of Tarantino's other films, True Romance is the most reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, something that becomes undeniable in light of the fact he reworked rejected material for the '93 film into his '94 classic. The groundwork for both films was actually laid in Reservoir Dogs, from name-dropping a gangster called Marsellus Spivey, leading to Marsellus Wallace and Drexl Spivey. Rather than taking multiple stories and having them cross over and intersect, True Romance instead fixates on a single story. Despite the drug crime backdrop, the movie is more of a perilous, romantic, and sometimes wholesome road trip, albeit an imperfect one that involves murder.

True Romance is full of the idiosyncrasies associated with Tarantino, random, character-building oddities and mannerisms that help his people stand out. One of the most notable of these is Clarence's constant visions of Elvis Presley (played by Val Kilmer), a reflection of the character's love of all things pop culture and his introspection. Like all of Tarantino's movies, the characters are written as flawed, offensive, blunt, and relatable people, something that's especially clear during the couple's early conversations. In addition, the film's soundtrack, replete with a soothing, lullaby-like theme, only adds to the movie's image as a '90s romantic crime thriller, a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde with a touch of Romeo & Juliet.

The film owes something to Tony Scott's decision to change what was originally a nonlinear script from Tarantino into a linear one. He also decided to change the original ending where Clarence dies into a happy ending, with the couple making off with the money and cutting to the pair with a child. The movie is a perfect match for late '80s/'90s youth culture, delivering a true case of two lovers pitted against the whole world. The couple leaves behind their lives of poverty and malaise for an adventure on the open road, culminating in a true happy ending.

True Romance Is One Of Tarantino's Best Works

Through the direction of Tony Scott, a young Tarantino had one of his best stories adapted to film, one that proved his strength in character arcs, dialogue, and balancing sub-plots. The film is also notably more compact than his average movie, trading in the expansive timescale of Kill Bill or the intersecting events of Pulp Fiction for a more linear film driven by its two leads. This focus plays to Tony Scott's strengths as a director, with his penchant for faster-paced stories paying off for the cross-country journey of Clarence and Alabama.

True Romance is ultimately held together by its characters, each of whom is given the chance to hold the spotlight independently of the film's leads. Whether it's Gary Oldman's brilliantly excessive performance as Drexl, Clifford's interrogation at the hands of Vincenzo, or Dick Ritchie's over-the-top audition, every character shines. Despite having failed at the box office in 1993, it has since rightly garnered the recognition it deserves, both from critics and audiences, especially fans of Tarantino. The film is fun to watch, even just because of its endless stream of actors who went on to become A-listers, including a young Brad Pitt. It may not have the box office numbers of Django Unchained or the touchstone status of Pulp Fiction, but True Romance is among the best achievements of both Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino.