Monday, March 17, 2008

Death proof review

Tarantino's film is an eloquent lament for a sleazy age when drive-in movies were the norm and flea pits were tacky and smoky.

I can’t tell you how joyous it is to see such shameless trash in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Critics here are infinitely more familiar with a wrist-slittingly sincere masterpiece from Uzbekistan, so Quentin Tarantino’s black B-movie farce arrives like a breath of fresh air.

Kurt Russell plays a scar-faced psycho (styled on Burt Reynolds) called Stunt Man Mike. He stalks impossibly beautiful chicks with little brains and less morals. Then he frightens the life out of them by chasing them up and down empty highways in a souped-up monster car with a death’s head painted on the bonnet.

Tarantino's film is an eloquent lament for a sleazy age when drive-in movies were the norm and flea pits were tacky and smoky. Death Proof – so-called because Mike’s car seat is a reinforced cage – is painstakingly riddled with scratches, smudges, sudden jumps and vertical yellow lines. The sound quality – with the fabulous exception of the period juke box hits -- is terrible, and the continuity hysterical. The utter shoddiness of the film makes you exquisitely aware of how carefully it is assembled. But if you can't stomach the jokes, or reference the references, the film might leave you utterly cold.

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