Death Proof

Death Proof (2007)

Written and Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Kurt Russell, Zoë Bell, Tracy Thoms, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Sydney Poitier (who is really a girl. Weird, eh?), Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rose McGowan, Jordan Ladd

One of the movies from Grindhouse, the other one being Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. I dunno why they released them separately, maybe they thought they would make more money? I gather that Grindhouse really bombed, considering how much it cost to make.

It's sort of hard to outline the plot because it doesn't really have one in the traditional sense, but it's about a guy known as Stuntman Mike who has a death proof car and goes around killing people with it. Kinda like Christine but not half as interesting. Anyway, he meets his match, as it were, when he tries to kill a couple of female stunt drivers who, you know, kill him.

It's sort of like two different movies (the first part is about a bunch of girls going to stay at this lake house who get terrorized and killed by Stuntman Mike, the second part is about the stunt women) except they're both exactly the same. The female characters in the first half are basically the same as the female characters in the second half...

And nothing happens a great deal of the time. Most of the movie is about a bunch of people sitting around talking and not doing anything. Granted, the dialogue is fantastic, but they aren't doing anything. It's all jut setting up the characters who then die and get replaced by new ones. What's the point?

It's a 'what's the point?' kind of movie, really. I mean, after all the talking and sitting around, there are a whole bunch of shots of girls' asses, sexy ladies dancing around. Giving Kurt Russell lap dances. Ew. In a weird way, I like Kurt Russell, but... well, he's old and gross. I thought he was dead.

Also, you kind of have to wonder about the Grindhouse ideal. I heard that this movie (I'm not sure that it's this one specifically, or both of them, but either way) cost $53 million to make. That's not a Grindhouse movie. If they had given Tarantino and Rodriguez, say $100 thousand cos I'm generous, to share. That would have been a fuckin grindhouse movie. But anyway, that's how I feel. It did look pretty cool. I mean, it was all grainy, and the picture and sound kept cocking up - I'm sure they did that all digitally, but it looked good. And then it changes to black and white for about ten minutes, and then when it goes back to colour, the grainy, grindhouse quality is gone. Where did it go? Weird.

And another thing! I kept wondering when the hell this was supposed to be set? It looked like the seventies or maybe early eighties, but people kept whipping out their cellphones and texting each other. Fuck.

So anyway, the movie is pretty much a big fucking bore. Sitting around, waiting for something interesting to happen. I mean, if it had been a sort of chickie drama rather than a serial killer movie a la The Hitcher, I would have been less annoyed...

Anyway, the highlight of the movie is a chase scene near the end of the second half which really was the shit. So there's this stuntwoman, right (real life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, playing herself) who decides to do a trick, just for fun, which involves her sitting on the hood of a speeding car. Okay? Then the evil guy comes and starts slamming into them and shit... man. And it was all so frigging real.

But the ending of the movie wasn't really very satisfying - I mean, they just kill him. And then that's it. Woo hoo.

Oh well. I'm kind of looking forward to the other one. It looks a little more... zombilicious. I dunno, I wanna see the chick with the gun for a leg. Yeah...

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