On DVD: Death Proof
Death Proof is the second film in "Grindhouse," a two-film experience put together by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, who directed this film. "Grindhouse" is a throwback to cheesy, exploitation-style movies from the mid-to-late seventies, and the film certainly captures that style from the start. Scratchy film, bad splices, 70's-style credits and visual cues all are totally consistent. But that's all the film is: an exercise in style, and a boring one at that.
The film, ostensibly, is about a psychopathic stuntman, Stuntman Mike (very well played by Kurt Russell with all his Snake Plissken charm), who targets pretty young women with his super-souped up stunt car of death and kills them. Why does he do this? We never know. What about the girls? Is there anything about them that's interesting or would drive the narrative? Not at all. In fact, Tarantino is pretty damn misogynist in his approach to these women, painting them, almost without exception, as self-centered whores who use their pussies like weapons against men. They, no doubt, deserve to die. Even in the second half of the film (and it really is two movies in one, like the "Grindhouse" set of films itself), when a separate set of girls turn the tables against Stuntman Mike, they do so by becoming men in terms of speech and action — playing the stereotypical make vigilante, except that they just happen to be women. I suppose he might have thought it was empowering, or celebrating strong women. Not really, though. It's more just plain stupid.
It's all style with no substance, and, stylistically, once the film goes in to its second half, there's no more 70's shlock style. All the elements present in the first half of the film disappear save for a single bad splice towards the end, thrown in as if Tarantino had to remind the viewer that he ('cause it's such a boy's movie) was still playing in that old Grindhouse style. Don't forget about all the geeky references to "Vanishing Point" and other favorite crap films of Tarantino's youth! They give the movie meaning, really they do!
Yes, the stunt work on the hood of the car is impressive, but who cares. The movie is exhaustingly uninteresting up to that point, so there's little to go on, little to care about, and little to redeem the mess.
