Grade: A-
Synopsis: A scarred stuntman (Kurt Russell) uses his crash-reinforced car to murder groups of unsuspecting women.
Death Proof is writer/director Quentin Tarantino’s love-letter to 1970’s drive-in cinema. While it may not be the deepest, or most compelling, story ever told, Tarantino succeeds in creating a world so immersive, the plot becomes secondary.
The film’s first half is the best, with much of it set in Warren’s Bar, a watering hole littered with movie memorabilia where everyone talks in Tarantino’s signature precise catch phrases and listens to his personal jukebox. There are a few subplots going on but nothing too distracting until Kurt Russell starts talking.
Tarantino has a knack for taking older actors and reinventing them, be it John Travolta, Robert Forster, or now, Kurt Russell. In Tarantino’s hands, Russell becomes a dark, modern day John Wayne, a pilgrim cowboy with a hint of menace behind his tired eyes.
Or so we think.
Later, Tarantino can’t resist turning this stereotype on its ear in the film’s conclusion, which works in its own way, but in the first half, Russell’s iconic.
The biggest problem is that there isn’t much here in the way of story. It’s an exploitation movie at heart, deferring to heart thumping car chases and grizzly crash sequences in favor of real drama or character development, but it wears its genre proudly and never pretends to be anything more. Indeed, it’s a testament to Tarantino’s talent that we wish it were.
