One of the Greatest Thrillers Ever is Coming to Free Streaming

January 30, 2026, 6:00pm

The 1990s were a great decade for movies. Considered by many to be a golden era for film, the decade saw an explosion across just about every genre and facet of that particular aspect of media. There was groundbreaking CGI advancements that lent to some visually impressive films. Disney was in a full-on renaissance, and while the Hollywood blockbuster was king, indie films were on the rise and thriving. The decade saw the beginnings of filmmakers who would go on to be major names and talents in the industry and now, one iconic filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s earliest films and one of the greatest thrillers ever, is about to stream free on Tubi.

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Released in 1993, True Romance was written by Quentin Tarantino but not directed by him. Instead, Tony Scott directed the film which boasts a star-studded cast that includes Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christpher Walken, and Val Kilmer in a cameo role that has since become one of his most iconic film moments. The wild ride of a romantic crime drama was a critical success and has become a cult classic and arrives on Tubi February 1st.

True Romance Is An Underappreciated Masterpiece

While True Romance wasn’t exactly a hit — despite the critical acclaim, the film grossed just $12.6 million on a budget of $12.6 — in retrospect the film is a masterpiece and one of the best films Tony Scott directed and is pretty high up on the list of Tarantino’s best works, too. The film follows Clarence Worley (Slater), an Elvis Presley superfan, who falls in love with Alabama Whitman (Arquette), a call girl hired by Clarence’s boss for his birthday. They get married and, convinced by an apparition of Elvis, Clarence kills Alabama’s pimp and accidentally steals a bag of drugs, sending the pair on the run with the mob in hot pursuit.

There are aspects of True Romance that are, for lack of a better term, dated. Watching the movie in 2026 it is very much a film made in and set in the early 1990s, but there is something kind of special about that. It’s a story that wouldn’t exactly work quite the same way if it were made now. Outside of that, however, the film is a really fascinating and perfect blend of the artistic styles of its two creators. There is absolutely no doubt that this is a Tarantino film in many respects. The filmmaker has a particularly distinctive voice as a writer and it shines through in True Romance, which he wrote and sold in order to finance his own directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs. But the film is also very much Scott’s film. Scott had a particular style to his filmmaking, especially in action sequences, and those fingerprints are very identifiable here. The two very clear, unique artistic signatures make the film wholly unique. And then of course there’s Kilmer’s appearance as Elvis that is absolutely unreal it’s both comedic and shockingly perfect. With True Romance coming to Tubi in February, it’s a perfect time to give this film a watch if for nothing else but that alone.

True Romance arrives on Tubi February 1st.

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