Grindhouse: Death Proof

Staring: Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan
Director: sigh…. Quentin Tarantino

Lets start at the worst and work our way up. What a wasted effort. Tarantino’s Death Proof is one of the bigger disappointments in recent memory for me. Very little of this film worked at all.

After an initial show of promise, the film’s “title” was “replaced” by the words “Death Proof” – the typical theater “rename” that used to happen once in a while to try and help sell a film – Tarantino decided to make an amalgam of both a Grindhouse film and one of HIS films.

Unfortunately it ends up a complete mess. The dialogue bits are hollow, meaningless, and totally pointless. Sure that’s what many conversations in cheap exploitation films are, but I’m going to THIS to be entertained, not to reminisce about how bad the dialogue was in those films 25+ years ago. I could tell you one thing after the film was over – Tarantino loves the sound of his own insipid writing.

While Robert Rodriguez’s film is borderline parody, but true to the formula which is just about the only way to do a good homage to a “jokey” genre which has all but died out – Tarantino’s shows exactly why there aren’t’ anymore “Grindhouse” flicks. The closest you get nowadays is the “Sci-Fi Original Pictures” every Saturday night (e.g. “Kaw” – a film about killer Crows). If I see Grindhouse again with people who have seen it as well, I’m leaving after the second set of trailers.

Verdict: **/*****