No matter what you think of him, a new Quentin Tarantino film is always awaited with anticipation, even if it is to see if he has recaptured the brilliance of PULP FICTION, and justified the reputation he earned from that film.
The geek that done good has been paying homage to the movies and video nasties he absorbed as a video store clerk for his last few movies, and these have met with varying degrees of revile and adoration. What is really disappointing is the way the studios and producers have been cynically exploiting his reputation and the loyalty of his fans. After the debacle of KILL BILL being divided into two movies we thought that we would finally get the chance to see a marathon movie in the form of GRINDHOUSE, the collaborative homage to seventies exploitation movies by two of cinema’s best-known maverick directors QT and Robert Rodriguez.
After dismal box office takings in the US, and less than favourable reviews, the films were divided into separate entities. Part of the failure of the films in the States could be attributed to the fact that the punters were getting two films, plus a selection of mock trailers for the price of one movie, instantly halving the cinemas’ revenues. As for the critics; the films were meant to be homages to grindhouse films, so what were they expecting? Grindhouse movies were never meant to be art.
So we get Tarantino’s film, DEATH PROOF, first. This received a lot of bad press, and word of mouth, from some quarters, saying it was inferior to Robert Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR, although there are also a lot of people who feel the opposite. Having only seen DEATH PROOF I am in no position to judge, but I am a fan of both filmmakers, even though I wasn’t overly impressed by SIN CITY.
For me DEATH PROOF was not a disappointment, possibly because I was expecting the worst, in fact I found it highly entertaining. OK it is a slightly self-indulgent homage, but it does exactly what it says on the label. Or maybe it’s because I’m old enough to remember seeing many of the movies it references, such as VANISHING POINT and DIRTY MARY AND CRAZY LARRY when they first came out. For whatever reason the film was fun.
Even this movie itself is almost two films. In the first half, three hot chicks are planning a weekend away in a lakeside cabin but stop at a bar, run by Mr Tarantino, where they meet Stuntman Mike (a fantastic Kurt Russell in Snake Pliskin mode). Mike drives a stunt car, which is where the film gets its title from, because it is made death proof. Let’s say that Mike’s intentions towards the girls are far from honourable.
The second half of the film is set over a year later in a different state, with four different girls who are working on a movie. One of the girls is a stuntperson (Zoe Bell, playing herself) who is really keen to drive a car the same as the one in VANISHING POINT. When she finds one for sale near the movie set she decides to take it for a test drive and use it to perform a high-speed stunt, except Stuntman Mike is waiting for them with other plans. This leads to an adrenaline-pumping car chase that alone justifies the admission price.
Tarantino obviously loves the genre and has recreated it in astonishing detail, complete with scratched, faded film, jumps, colour shifts and everything you expect to see on a movie that has been abused by bad projectors. Tarantino has obviously put as much effort into making this film look genuinely bad as Soderbergh did in making THE GOOD GERMAN look lush. But it goes beyond just the look. It has all the usual pop-culture referential dialogue that got him noticed in the first place and plenty of visual references that geeks will be able to talk about for hours.
Everyone I have spoken to that saw it loved it, but admittedly they were all blokes, and it is very much a blokes’ film, in the sense that it has lots of beautiful women and fast cars. But the women are strong and in the end are not exploited as they were in the original movies of the genre.
Now we just have to wait with equal anticipation for Rodriguez’s zombie movie.
DEATH PROOF is on general release from September 21.