Zachary FenellSaturday Boners: Deathproof
January 24th 2009 17:02
Deathproof, 2007
Oh, god, where do I start...?
There is something very, very wrong with Quentin Taratino's head. I've seen a number of his movies - his segment from Four Rooms, his segment in From Dusk Til Dawn, both Kill Bill episodes - and all I can think is, what sadistic person told him he could make movies? It's like some cruel twisted joke where someone is letting him make film after film, snickering in the background, waiting for him to figure out that he's just not that great of a writer or director - except that everyone else seems to have bought into this idea as well, so a warped stunt has become a cultural phenomenon. In essence, Tarantino has no clothes, though I'm given to understand that Reservoir Dogs is supposed to be some kind of cinematic awesome, but I can't bring myself to watch it yet... and now, I may not ever.
Deathproof is Tarantino's half of the Grindhouse double-feature. Robert Rodriguez did the other part with Planet Terror. I suspect that Rodriguez has actually seen a real grindhouse movie. I cannot say the same for Tarantino - or rather, if Tarantino did see a grindhouse movie, he really did not understand what defined the genre.
One of the first things you'll notice is that Deathproof is too long by a magnitude of about six. The box says its unedited run-time is 114 minutes. By the midway point, you already want your three hours back... and then it keeps going. "Meandering" and "pointless" are both appropriate to the script (if we're being nice), which goes beyond stream-of-consciousness and well into self-fellating. There is absolutely no reason on this green earth why we should watch a self-centered b***h we care nothing about text message her booty call for five minutes. After this, I think all text messaging may need to be banned from all movies. This is not an isolated event.
The plot centers around Stuntman Mike, played by Kurt Russel, who apparently owed Tarantino a lot of money or else a favor for that time he did that thing for him in that place with the guy. Stuntman Mike gets his kicks by murdering girls with his car. Sure, he ends up in the hospital, but he'll survive - he's a stuntman, after all. He's appropriately creepy, stalking them in the way that truly creepy guys do - out in the open, where it's obviously just a coincidence that he's there with them, again. After he totals the first group of ladies in possibly one of the most ridiculously gratuitous mangle-the-dummy scenes EVER, he recovers and wanders off, then gets another car and death-proofs it to do the whole thing over again.
Here be SPOILERS:
There are a few good things, vaguely: Zoe Bell is awesome. She plays herself as a stunt-woman visiting from New Zealand, and we get caught up in her enthusiasm to recreate the scene from the Vanishing with the Dodge Charger. I enjoyed seeing Stuntman Mike cry like a spanked baby at the end when they're curb-stomping him into a grease stain. I liked... the end, as in the part where the movie stopped and I could get up and leave without feeling like I just wasted $10.00. (And, yes, I watched it on a rented DVD. My previous statement stands.)
As cute as it is to count the deliberate errors and try to finish the connect-the-dots with all the self-referential placement like the Acuna Boys cup, the AMi jukebox, the tank top from Big Trouble in Little China, etc., that should be the only reason to see this movie, and then only if you're a hard-core Tarantino nerd. I know of real Tarantino fans who admit this movie stinks. They're right.
But... he tried to honor grindhouse and he did pull off a 7-minute long shot (as in, filmed the conversation at the diner, a la Reservoir Dogs, in one long unbroken take - look for Stuntman Mike in the background). That kinda calls for something.
1.5 Stars
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Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Mostly because of the no-CGI car chase scene that must've been hell to film, but thrilling to finish.
Also, I saw it as part of Grindhouse, so was it shorter?