Make no mistake, Death Proof is not a particularly entertaining film. In Russell and Tarantino you have a collaboration that I would and did pay good money to see. And in doing so I allowed myself to be misled by some astute promotional work on the part of Dimension Films (there's a new one) and a premise that all but screamed slasher film only to set up as anything but.
Like a moth drawn to the light, the lure of Kurt Russell engaging in road movie violence was too much to resist. It may not have been a deliberate fiction on the part of the film-maker to pack out the theaters with this premise. After all, Tarantino himself has publicly emphasised the difference between this movie and a slasher movie. Nevertheless the fiction remained right up until the credits rolled, by which stage you can't help but feel that Tarantino misused Russell in yet another attempt to further popularise his now distinctive style of film. A style that increasingly seems to resemble the director using his lofty position in the industry to showcase the 1970s because the rest of us don't know what we've missed. And I personally would not have had a problem with this had he not taken an 80s icon and epitome of bad-assedness and then proceeded to sell him down the river before my very eyes by making him both different and diluted.
Kurt Russell plays the role of Stuntman Mike, a psychopathic personality who stalks the roads in his death proof car preying on young and attractive women. As an idea it reads like a dream. In reality it was inconsistent and boring. Tarantino hung large sections of dialogue on the women in the picture, both hunters and hunted, while the audience waited patiently for something to happen amid the bluff and bluster of conversations that included references to sex, marijuana and of course lots of swear words, all stock in trade of an increasingly one dimensional Tarantino. In Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and even Jackie Brown these references are welcome and fresh. They represent breakout material. In Death Proof they are tired and old. You've seen it before. Again the script will likely be praised as another piece in the overall body of work that encompasses the genius. Those who disagree will be told they don't get it. What I got was that Tarantino makes use of fleeting bar-room wisdom, Robert Frost and Rose McGowan to let us know that Stuntman Mike is psychopathic. Alongside a dark car. And guess what? Not one of the three is unique in the slightest. And so the film lurches like a bar-room drunk between not having enough depth to be interesting on the dialogue alone and not having enough violence or tension to be interesting in the exploitation sense, all while being obvious from the outset, a bad combination to have. It runs slow, lacks build-up in key areas, is certainly predictable from one particular elongated scene onwards and is largely too abstract amid the boredom. To say it reminded me of Cannonball run is no exaggeration, from serious to slapstick while actually staying violent.
Kurt Russell! The Thing. Escape from New York. Big trouble in little China. THAT Kurt Russell is not the one you see in this film. Critically this will be received well because for what it is, it is great. And what it is is a raw showing of female empowerment, bad versus badass. The fact that this sort of material has a very specific time and place that isn't necessarily on the back of a potentially iconic collaboration is what lets Death Proof down. Do the research before watching this one.
Like a moth drawn to the light, the lure of Kurt Russell engaging in road movie violence was too much to resist. It may not have been a deliberate fiction on the part of the film-maker to pack out the theaters with this premise. After all, Tarantino himself has publicly emphasised the difference between this movie and a slasher movie. Nevertheless the fiction remained right up until the credits rolled, by which stage you can't help but feel that Tarantino misused Russell in yet another attempt to further popularise his now distinctive style of film. A style that increasingly seems to resemble the director using his lofty position in the industry to showcase the 1970s because the rest of us don't know what we've missed. And I personally would not have had a problem with this had he not taken an 80s icon and epitome of bad-assedness and then proceeded to sell him down the river before my very eyes by making him both different and diluted.
Kurt Russell plays the role of Stuntman Mike, a psychopathic personality who stalks the roads in his death proof car preying on young and attractive women. As an idea it reads like a dream. In reality it was inconsistent and boring. Tarantino hung large sections of dialogue on the women in the picture, both hunters and hunted, while the audience waited patiently for something to happen amid the bluff and bluster of conversations that included references to sex, marijuana and of course lots of swear words, all stock in trade of an increasingly one dimensional Tarantino. In Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and even Jackie Brown these references are welcome and fresh. They represent breakout material. In Death Proof they are tired and old. You've seen it before. Again the script will likely be praised as another piece in the overall body of work that encompasses the genius. Those who disagree will be told they don't get it. What I got was that Tarantino makes use of fleeting bar-room wisdom, Robert Frost and Rose McGowan to let us know that Stuntman Mike is psychopathic. Alongside a dark car. And guess what? Not one of the three is unique in the slightest. And so the film lurches like a bar-room drunk between not having enough depth to be interesting on the dialogue alone and not having enough violence or tension to be interesting in the exploitation sense, all while being obvious from the outset, a bad combination to have. It runs slow, lacks build-up in key areas, is certainly predictable from one particular elongated scene onwards and is largely too abstract amid the boredom. To say it reminded me of Cannonball run is no exaggeration, from serious to slapstick while actually staying violent.
Kurt Russell! The Thing. Escape from New York. Big trouble in little China. THAT Kurt Russell is not the one you see in this film. Critically this will be received well because for what it is, it is great. And what it is is a raw showing of female empowerment, bad versus badass. The fact that this sort of material has a very specific time and place that isn't necessarily on the back of a potentially iconic collaboration is what lets Death Proof down. Do the research before watching this one.
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