Review of Death Proof (2007) by Kbto S — 23 Jul 2013

I get the sense, watching "Death Proof," that Tarantino made exactly the kind of movie that he wanted to make. Unfortunately, I think the movie he wanted to make is a rotten movie. Still, there's obvious skill and craft on display--the scenes of vehicular mayhem are staged with an extraordinary sense of velocity coupled with an amazing degree of formal precision, and Tarantino obviously knows how to frame and cut and choreograph his material, even when his material is trash.

And, while it pays homage to the grindhouse movies of the 1970s he obviously adores, there's some interesting genre deconstruction and reconstruction going on here, particularly in the finale, in which the three heroines give the disgusting, despicable horror movie villain his comeuppance.

In a way, this is "Vertigo," with the self-proclaimed pop auteur putting his sadistic sexual fetishes on screen and then holding himself accountable for them. Still, as is too often the case with Tarantino, the rah-rah girl-power horror movie critique of the finale rings a bit false for me when it's the scenes of brutal, bloody, disconcertingly gleeful violence--both those inflicted by and on the women--that he really seems to relish.