Grindhouse: Death Proof

Written & Directed by QT

Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan, Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth.

In Tarantino’s contribution to 2007’s Grindhouse double feature partnership with Robert Rodriguez, focuses on ‘aleged’ Stuntman Mike McKay (Russell) who stalks groups of women, before he brutally kills them by purposefully crashing his ‘Death Proof’ car into them. A year after his latest victims, he finds he might be outmatched, when the newest group fight back.

In terms of narrative structure, this is Tarantino’s weakest film. The film is really only broken into two parts, Jungle Julia’s group, and Abernathy’s group. This difference in the arc breakdown does make it the poorest film in his filmography, but it is not a bad film.

Like most of his films, this too is dialogue heavy – with the first real action sequence taking almost an hour to occur. While die hard Tarantino lovers, and even the Tarantino supporters (myself included) might be fine with this; the lack of action might detract. When it is present, it is typically bloody – with more realism here than he has done in the past.

The characters are all well written, with enough information given about the characters given that we genuinely care for them. When we see what Mike is capable of, we don’t want this to happen to the second group, as they too have grown on us for half an hour or so.

The final car chase, is very impressive, and even better due to real life stunt woman (and QT regular stunt woman) Zoe Bell playing “herself” doing her own stunts on top of the car.

There is the usual QT dialogue, score and soundtrack and arrogant cameo that serves little purpose. The ‘grainy’ cinema type adds to the dirty look of cinema that came with ‘Grindhouse’ features. It also makes great use of long takes which is one of Tarantino’s trademarks.

This is still very a very watchable film.

3/5