Death Proof (Two-Disc Edition) [DVD]

Yeah theres all the arty stuff and all the references to old movies and the amazing style, sound and direction. The camerawork is great, there are sexy ladies and Tarantinos performance in this one wasnt too bad. But even all of this doesn't make a great film.

For the first half I didn't get it. I sat there hating Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russel) and hating the film. I thought Tarantino had missed the mark bigtime, like a lot of other people here. I sat and watched as the second half of the film built up the backstory of more characters, and then stuntman mike appears again and I feared more of the same.

It was about then I realised this was a vengeance movie. I would go as far as to say one of the best of all time, only behind "Oldboy". To be frank most of the movie is just building up to the end; but what an end. Never have I hated a main character so much that the thought of vengeance, which dominates the other characters on screen, was resounding so deep within me that I was so sure the antagonist deserved what he got. To be shown a desire for vengeance like that was something no film has ever made me feel before.

This movie is the pure, distilled example of how to make the audience really care about the characters on screen. There is no complex plot. There wasn't a big budget. But the raw emotion this film can invoke, if you let it, is well worth it.

Kurt Russell is Stuntman Mike, a guy with an eye for the ladies and a penchant for vehicular homicide. In fact, there's nothing that Stuntman Mike enjoys more than using his 'deathproof' car to wreak a little havoc and take a few lives.

The girls are sexy, the music is great and the stunts are fantastic.

About 45 minutes in everything ramps up for the most gratuitous and amazing crash sequence in the whole film and it is certainly impressive, not to mention voyeuristic with its multiple camera shots showing each victims demise in bloody detail.

The first half of the movie contains the most gratuitous death scene but the second half is the one with the most memorable stunts, particularly the one involving real life stunt woman Zoe Bell on the bonnet of a white Dodge Challenger. It's one of those rare moments that you get in a film where you are just watching in a stunned silence completely focused on what is enfolding on the screen. There is also a really well done motorcycle stunt in the second half that is almost a throwaway moment, which passes by so quickly that it's almost a case of blink and you'll miss it and yet it is a fantastic looking stunt.

Tarantino displays his flair for long scenes in which the characters just talk about nothing in particular and often nothing that's relevant to the plot in a style that isn't always realistic but works so well cinematically that somehow you just can't help but listen and become engrossed in what is being said.
Anyone familiar with the movies partner film Planet Terror will recognise a few characters from the hospital scene, and Tarantino/Rodrigez regular Michael Parks once again reprises his role as Sherriff Earl McGraw.

Stylistically the two halves of the film are different, with the second half being the cleaner image of the two. Almost making it appear like a different movie.

You could argue that a lot of time and money has gone into making a film that is homage to a genre of movies that were made quickly and cheaply. You could also argue that the scratchy film stock and jumps in editing are more artistic than a result of the low budget nature of grind house movies. The thing is, despite its flaws, this is still a really good and entertaining film. Anyone who is a fan of the old `car chase' movies from the 70's will get a kick out of this.

I'm a fan of the movies and style that Deathproof is referencing, so I guess my opinion is a little coloured by that fact but I would recommend this to anyone that hasn't seen it before and then recommend that once it's over, go out and watch the films that are mentioned in this movie.

Annoyingly the single disc edition still has `disc 1' printed on it, somehow mocking you for having bought that version. As the two are(at the time of writing) identically priced and as expected the single disc edition is minimal on the extras, then the two disc version is the one to go for.

So Tarantino and Rodriguez's ambitious Grindhouse project is cut up into tiny pieces with Deathproof regurgitated as "Quentin's 5th film". What a terrible, terrible idea because this is frivolous fodder of the most unambitious type. The movie has now been extended and is now largely made up of unexceptional dialogue and natty scratchy film effects, it's pretty boring stuff and I have to admit if it had been a film by anyone else, I would have been tempted to turn off. The car scene is also a let down. In one of the (poor) DVD extras Quentin mouths off about how he wanted to test his metal against the great directors of the genre (like George Miller) in a hope that his would be "all time top 10, top 3...the best" car chase in cinema history. Sorry Quent ol' chap but yours is RUBBISH and to talk about it in the same breath as Mad Max or Bullitt is embarrassing. This is as far from the genius of Reservoir Dogs (which single handedly reinvigorated cinema), Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown as its possible to get and backs up every word his critics have said (i.e. that he's a derivative culture thief), I hate that but I won't kid myself into thinking this is worth my time. What the hell happened to "Inglorious Bastards"?