Death Proof is anything but.The Tarantino half of the Grindhouse experience - a cheesy project to return the B-movie double feature to America's cinema screens - falls foul of it's own cleverness.
Tarantino perfectly recreates the sleazy soundtrack, grainy camerawork and amateurish scripts that made the old seventies slasher flicks such trashy classics. In doing so, however, all he manages to do is make his own crappy horror movie.
Death Proof tells two tedious tales featuring trashy looking girls. In the first half of the movie, DJ Jungle Julia and her pals have a tequila-sozzled night out which climaxes in Julia's friend, Butterfly, giving a lapdance to crazy-eyed barfly 'Stuntman Mike.' The scar-faced stuntman then stalks the girls as they DUI their way home, killing all four of them in a grisly head-on car crash.
Stuntman Mike, you see, is a serial killer. His weapon of choice? A classic hot-rod specially reinforced to be 'Death Proof.' As Mike explains: "You could hit a brick wall at 125mph and walk away." He then goes on to test this theory by demolishing the girl's car.Flash forward a year. Stuntman Mike is back - his '70 Chevy Nova replaced by a mean looking '69 Dodge Charger. He spots four likely looking girls driving through the Tennessee backwoods and decides to give them a taste of his Death Proof car.
But Mike has made a mistake. These girls are stunt-bunnies, on the set of a 'cheerleader movie' being filmed nearby (the best line of the movie is: "What's a cheerleader movie?" to which one of the girls replies: "It's a movie. About cheerleaders.")
These girls are taking a '70 Dodge Challenger for a test drive (one of the crazy girls actually strapping herself to the bonnet.) When Stuntman Mike tries to drive them off the road, the spunky stunt women turn the tables and chase the villainous murderer down in a breathtaking high-speed chase. He dies with a stiletto heel through the skull, after crashing his car into a hillside.And that's the plot, pretty much.
It all sounds much more exciting then it is. Aside from the breathtaking 18 minute car chase, the entire movie seems to be made up of dreary dialogue between the bitchy girls. Sadly, Tarantino's scripts don't match his quick-fire dialogue from the Pulp Fiction days and as the girls rabbit on-and-on, you can't help but wish they'd just shut up and get on with it.
It does have it's highlights. As crazy Stuntman Mike, veteran actor Kurt Russell has a field day. He's a seriously bad-ass badguy. The cars are stars in their own right, too. The chase at the climax of the movie is worth the admission price - just not the time spent trudging through the dreary dialogue to get there.The girls are good looking. None of your skinny, polished Hollywood stuff here. They have curvy figures, dirty mouths and tons of attitude. If Quentin had just skimmed half their dialogue, this film would have been a lot more entertaining.
Sadly, though, it all comes to naught. Just like the movie, actually. The ending is an anticlimax, with Tarantino throwing up 'The End' despite there being some glaring loose ends.
Quentin Tarantino! Please, answer these questions!
- Whatever happened to the pretty cheerleader? Last we saw, she'd been left at the mercy of 'Jasper' the redneck, who'd been informed that she was a porn star and 'sexually available.'
- What will Jasper say when the girls return with his precious '70 Challenger in pieces?
- During the climactic car chase, the girls killed a motorcyclist and drove three cars off the road. Then they kerb-stomped the baddy. What exactly will the police say about this?
- And sorry to repeat myself, but seriously. What happened to the cute-but-helpless cheerleader?
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