Review of Death Proof (2007) by Jens T — 02 Feb 2013

It had to come sooner or later. A Tarantino film that must be considered as his worst, or rather "least satisfying". I don't hold this against him, but this is kind of a sad reminder that Tarantino is forever attached to movie tributes, and probably will never go back to the glory days of Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, films that stood alone, without being reminded that I were watching a tribute to either spaghetti western or the grindhouse genre.

Tarantino's Death Proof, together with Rodriguez' Planet Terror forms the double feature presentation "Grindhouse" which is a tribute to the Grindhouse movies, which is a therm used to describe theaters that showed mostly B-movies, exploitation films, which where mostly horror and burlesque movies. Death Proof is the story about the retired stuntman, named Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) who is sexually obsessed with models, and loves to use his death proof stunt car to hit their cars and kill them.

Death Proof is not a bad film, but I can't deny the fact that there were too much talking, which is usually a good thing in every Tarantino movie, where the dialogues is probably the best parts. But there's certainly no "Royal with Cheese" in this one. Death Proof is more of a chick flick, with a lot of random bimbos talking about stuff that I don't really care about. Death Proof is split up in two parts. The first hour: a bunch of models in Texas getting killed. The last forty minutes is about four women from Hollywood in Tennessee, two of them stunt women.

The problem with the first part is that we actually follow random Texan sluts that we don't really care about, that talks about boys and... things I don't remember. But the women in the second part is so much more interesting. I was engage during their conversations, I can remember what they talked about, and they had a pretty simple goal, buying a 1971 Chevy Nova from a redneck. Now these women are strong female characters, including two stuntwomen, like Zoe Bell, who was Uma Thurman's stunt double in Kill Bill, is credited as herself. And together with Tracie Thoms and Rosario Dawson they are able to take down Stuntman Mike in an exhilarating car chase, which is such a joy to watch.

The first hour was pretty much just a set up, and of course every movie needs one. But this one was to long, with girls I don't even care about. The only good things during the first hour was every word that came out of Kurt Russell's mouth and when he killed all the girls with is car. Basically ten minutes of cool stuff. Instead of following the girls, we should had followed Kurt Russell. And it would not been weird, switching from Russell to the women in part two. I wish that I could give this a better grade, by denying the existence of part one. But what is seen cannot be unseen. But I still think that part two was so exhilarating, with strong women and great car chases that I gonna give it a marginal thumbs up.