Quick Review: Death Proof

I have few regrets in life. In fact I make a concerted effort to live my life free of regrets. Sadly, I now have a mother load of regret over the fact that I did not see Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez’s double feature Grindhouse in the theater last spring. Going into 2007, Grindhouse was number 6 on my Top 15 Things to Look for in 2007 and obviously I was looking forward to it. However travel, other films, and the fact that the film(s) enjoyed a disastrously short box office stay all impeded me from seeing it in the theater. Excuses of course are like assholes…

So fast forward 6 months and what should arrive from Netflix but Tarantino’s half of the film entitled Death Proof. After the miserable box office take the Weinstein Company decided to release Grindhouse on DVD as two separate films with extended versions of each. Tarantino’s came out in September, and Rodriguez’s just last week. As I put in Death Proof last night I was already disappointed that I was missing out on the double feature experience that Grindhouse provided in the theater, yet with my love for all things Tarantino still in my heart I eagerly embarked on the film.

Death Proof is a muddled mess of genius and boredom. I don’t think that Tarantino’s “shtick” of talking heads has gone stale but I will say he needs to rein it in a bit. The majority of Death Proof is listening to two sets of girlfriends babble on about sex, drugs, and the occasional classic tune. Sure there are some classic bits of Tarantino dialogue including a post shot toast from the director himself playing a bartender but overall I found myself losing interest in a hurry. Meanwhile we’ve got Kurt Russell hunting down said girlfriends with his stunt car from hell. It’s a blast to see Russell recapture some of his bad assery from the Snake Pillson days but I wanted more him and less of his prey. Finally there’s the third element and the real heart of the flick and that’s the car chases. Tarantino’s never been touted as a great action director but he can lay claim to that now. The climax of the first segment of the film is not only gruesome but an amazing work of editing from its jump cuts to its repetition. The finale of the film is classic old school car racing that reminds one of Bullet or The French Connection if they were set in rural Tennessee. In the end though, these moments as awesome as they were, didn’t make the film that enjoyable. I found myself rather ambiguous about the whole experience and that’s when I really found the regret over missing the film in the theater. The DVD has a few extras but missing are the fake trailers that were sprinkled throughout Grindhouse by such directors as Rob Zombie and Eli Roth and of course there’s the fact that Death Proof was intended to be consumed with Planet Terror all in one sitting. Is Death Proof a horrible misstep in the career of Tarantino? No, but I think as a stand alone pic, it is clearly his worst but seen as it was originally intended to be, I think it would do its job and then some. Sadly, that’s something I missed out on by abandoning the film at the multiplex earlier this year. Thankfully as with most regrets I’ll have a chance to atone when the theatrical version of Grindhouse with both films and all the faux trailers hits DVD next June. Until then though I will wallow in my own pool of regret…