Movie Title: Death Proof
Genre: Action, Horror, Mystery
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Rose McGowan, Sydney Poitier, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Zoë Bell
Review: Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) is a professional body double who likes to take unsuspecting women for deadly drives in his free time. He has doctored his car for maximum impact; when Mike purposely causes wrecks, the bodies pile up while he walks away with barely a scratch. The insane Mike may be in over his head, though, when he targets a tough group of female friends, including real-life stuntwoman Zoë Bell, who plays herself.
Part two of Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse double feature is the Tarantino-directed Death Proof. To get this out of the way early, Death Proof is widely considered to be Quentin Tarantino's weakest directorial effort. But this doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad movie. The Tarantino standard is quite high, and I think the general response to this film is less about the actual film and more just an indictment at Tarantino's other more critically-acclaimed efforts. I think this movie kind of struggles to get it's wheels spinning, but once it does it's a rather entertaining and fun car chase movie. Kurt Russell is his usual awesome self as Stuntman Mike, a stuntman who doubles as a movie star by day and as a serial killer by night. I thought Zoë Bell was great as well, playing herself, a real life stuntwoman who was actually Uma Thurman's body double in Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2. Bell did all of her own stunts in this film, including the infamous "Ship's Mast" scene. Where I had an issue was that this film basically consisted of two separate like stories. One car chase where Stuntman Mike hunts down a group of young girls, and another where the girls flip the script. And with regards to the script and dialogue, I think this movie fell short in comparison to some of Tarantino's other literary masterpieces. There was more of a shallowness to the dialogue as the girls predominantly talked about some of their more sexual exploits. It just seemed to me to lack a certain amount of substance that we are typically accustomed to in a Tarantino film. That said, I thought the movie had plenty of action, and carried some great entertainment value. But in an arena where the bar is set so high, Death Proof didn't quite reach the mark in my opinion.
Fun Fact: Quentin Tarantino came up with the idea of Death Proof while talking at a bar with his friend, Sean Penn. Tarantino was in the market for a new car, thinking he would get a Volvo because they were safe. Penn began telling Tarantino that for roughly $20,000, he could take any car to a stunt specialist and they could reinforce it and make it "death proof." The phrase stuck with Tarantino and it seemed like a good title for a film about a huge car chase.