Death Proof

Ah, Quentin, Quentin. Quenty. Where did it all go wrong?

I think I have the answer.

See, Tarantino has done some good stuff. Reservoir Dogs had great dialogue, even if the story was ripped off wholesale from City On Fire. Pulp Fiction was just 20 minutes away from being possibly the greatest movie of modern times; flabby editing (which should have served as a warning) stops it just short of being perfect.

Jackie Brown was a huge surprise; smart, simple, beautifully acted and low-key. Kill Bill was creative, absurdly so, and largely quite good fun.

I'll always think of From Dusk Till Dawn as being partly a Tarantino movie, largely because of the writing credit, and FDTD has exactly the same problem as Death Proof: indulgence. FDTD sets up perfectly with the robbery of the store, the entrance of the policeman... We understand the brothers, their roles, what they do, one is unhinged etc. So why spend another 50 minutes rehashing the same shite? We know they're bad. The references to sexual violence on their journey do nothing to expand the characters, and it's not even well written. It's just there for the sake of it, and so Tarantino can 'act' in the movie.

Something he is truly fucking crap at, btw.

Same problem in Death Proof; what could take 15 minutes in the hands of a decent editor and a non-indulgent dirtector takes 45 minutes. It's dull. Really, really dull. Meaningless conversations that go nowhere might be just like real life, but this isn't real life. It's a fucking movie. If I want real life dull conversations that go nowhere, I'll go to the fucking pub myself, thanks.

The movie is a supposed homage to 'Grindhouse'. I've spent my life watching movies, reading about them, and even spent a couple of years as editor of one of the biggest DVD magazines in Europe. I do know movies, honestly. But the term 'grindhouse' is a nonsense one. It means nothing, and until this movie and Planet Terror came out, I reckon no fucker on the planet outside Chez Tarantino was using the expression (for the record, the term is used to describe the kind of cinemas these movies played in, apparently, rather than the film. Still sounds like a load of old bollocks to me).

The usual term for that type of movie is exploitation; sometimes people refer to them as 'B-movies' (not exactly accurately), but there are other names. But Grindhouse? Right out of Tarantino's arse, in my opinion. Maybe it's an American thing, but... I have my doubts. If someone out there wants to prove me wrong, fine. Maybe it's a cultural thing.

Aaaaaaanyway, it's not a good homage. It's cutesy, it's clever, but it's not accurate. The kind of movies we're talking about usually had a lot of filler in. And the filler most certainly was not meaningless, shite-boring conversations. Q, if you want to emulate the genre you claim to love so much, where were the pointless shower scenes that take up to seven minutes, where was the pointless softcore lesbianism? That's the filler these movies used, hacked in by producers to bump the running time up, or simply to titillate the drive-in crowd.

I'm just saying.

Okay, the movie concerns Stuntman Mike, some bloke who was a stuntman. He's played by Kurt Russell. He targets some women, and plans to do... something with his car. Something bad, we reckon.

Well, he does it, then his attentions switch to some other women, and he plans to do it again. Only this time, he's picked on the wrong group of women. Oh yes.

It's simple, it gleefully wastes your time with a lot of pointless crap, and honestly, the whole thing could have been perfectly served up in a one-hour movie. Now, a one-hour movie on a double bill actually makes a lot of sense – some 'B's used to be 65, 70 minutes, so it's not unusual. But no, he had to put himself in it, he had to pad it out with some real shite, and he had to make it oh-so-distinctly a Tarantino movie.

Sadly, much as I was looking forward to it, this movie sucked. Best things about it were A) the Planet Terror trailer at the start and B) the fact that, to rid our minds of the suckiness of this, we watched the brilliant This Is England later that night, and it really was superb.