Love and a .45 (1994)

***Quirky white trash crime spree satire tries too hard***

A young no-class couple from central Texas (Gil Bellows & Renee Zellweger) flee from loan sharks and a maniac ex-partner (Rory Cochrane), seeking a shotgun wedding and to escape to Mexico.

"Love and a .45" (1994) is a satirical black comedy crime flick inspired by the Charles Starkweather killing spree of January, 1958, who was accompanied by his 14 year-old girlfriend. Similar films were inspired by the same real-life episode: “Badlands” (1973), “Kalifornia” (1993) and “Natural Born Killers” (1994). Seventeen months after Starkweather’s spree he was wiped off the face of the earth via electric chair. Needless to say, we were wiser then.

While “Badlands” and “Kalifornia” were realistic, “Love and a .45” takes the satirical route à la “Natural Born Killers,” but it tries too hard to be an oddball cult flick about dirtbags, not to mention it’s shallow. By contrast, the contemporaneous “Pulp Fiction” didn’t have to try hard; it just was (the real deal; and not shallow at all). But there are enough highlights in “Love and a .45” if you don’t mind movies about white trash crazies: Zellweger never looked better, not even in “Empire Records” (1995); Cochrane gives it his all; and Bellows works as a likable anti-hero.

The film runs 1 hour, 42 minutes, and was shot in the heart of Texas (Bastrop & Austin).

GRADE: C/C-