Tarantino Having Fun

Death Proof is Quentin Tarantino's contribution to the Grindhouse double feature, an unapologetic embrace of low budget exploitation films that played in drive-ins throughout the 60s and 70s. Heavy on "royal with cheese" dialogue and chalked full of some of Hollywood's best eye candy, Death Proof unmistakenly wears the fingerprints of its creator.Taking his homage as far as he can go, Tarantino also recreates the hisses, pops, cigarette burns, missing/repeated frames and audio inconsistencies common during the drive-in era.

Despite the dozen or so scream queen roles that Tarantino no doubt wrote into the script so he could fill them with a casting couch, Death Proof's star is Kurt Russell, the mysterious Stunt Man Mike, an ageing scarred Elvis Man who drives around in a stunt car built to survive any accident. Since Stunt Man Mike knows he can live though any crash with this "Death Proof" car, he uses his automobile as a weapon to mow down Tarantino's titillating temptresses. Death Proof does not explain why Stuntman Mike does what he does, instead relying on the audience to accept the simplistic, one dimensional nature of classic exploitation horror films. Stunt Man Mike kills people...enough said.

After what appears to have been a long life of automobile decapitations and mutilations, Stunt Man Mike seems to meet his match when he targets a car full of female stunt drivers, a duel which manifests into a car war that would make James Dean, Gene Hackman and The Dukes of Hazzard all jealous. The last half of Death Proof features some of the most unbelievable stunt work ever captured on screen, highlighted by Zoe Bell (real life stuntwoman playing herself) slipping and spinning on her car's hood at terrifying speeds.

As with most of his work in the last decade and a half, Tarantino is more concerned with having fun than with recreating the brilliance of his early films. Nothing in Death Proof is meant to challenge the White/Pink bantering from Reservoir Dogs or the Christopher Walken scenes from True Romance or Pulp Fiction. He's not making those kind of movies anymore. Instead, Tarantino is like a Senior who only needs a few electives to graduate and spends his last semester taking swimming and ballroom dancing. He's done all the hard work and now just wants to have a good time. With Death Proof, Tarantino clearly achieves that goal...and audiences who understand his intentions will enjoy the ride.

Better as a shorter movie

Quentin Tarantino's style is cool and I really love the references to great movies of the past but this movie was more about how the movie is made than what it's about. Stunt-man Kurt added class to the movie. The girls were hot but in the end Kurt wimps and the girls get ugly. Worth seeing but only barely. Bonus features are interesting. It's heart breaking to see so many 70's era cars destroyed. I wept for the Challenger.

On this whole boycott thing....get over it. They can sell it how they want. If you personally don't like it.....DON'T BUY IT.

Could have been much better!

The premise for this movie was great! It could have been a spectacular film, especially with the way talented Kurt Russell handled his role as the automobile-homicidal killer, but the lengthy dialog was brutal. The topics that were being discussed for time unending were nonsensical and had absolutely nothing to do with the movie. Through conversations galore you learn all about a few girls and their lives, not to be set up for something in the plot that pertains to their conversations, but to have them killed moments later in a mere few seconds. What seemed like hours upon hours of dreadful dialog and tiny amounts of action led to the two stars above. The car chase made the one star a two for me.
This movie was simply ridiculous and a total waste of time! Quentin Tarantino is too in love with himself to film a movie the proper way (with less meaningless dialog and a hint of suspense).
Here's one for ya Quentin, why don't you stop doing tributes to other dated film eras and do something creative, original, and up to par with today's film genres! STOP LIVING IN THE PAST! IT'S GONE ALREADY!!!!!