Review: 

As if the Hollywood machine and its swelling budgets needed any more directors to help celebrate its arrested development and self-satisfied ostentation, two of its biggest perpetuators in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez joined up in a mega production called Grindhouse, a double feature that included Tarantinos Death Proof and Rodriguezs Planet Terror, with each film envisaged as contemporary variations of the 70s genre grind-house, a culmination of horror, sex, gore and cheap thrills that piled on as much as it could in its abbreviated runtimes that all stemmed from the misunderstood school of exploitation cinema. 

Now, from a prima facie viewpoint, there is something fundamentally ridiculous and witless about spending close to a US$100 million on a film style that was supposed to be cheap, guerilla filmmaking. But with Tarantinos and his leading stylistic impressionist on board, it ended up becoming a if you got clout, flout it sort of enterprise. 

With the onus squarely set on the duo, much was being made of the ambitiously puerile simulation of a genre borne out of contempt for Hollywoods status quo. So even while the possibilities attracted a great deal of fanfare before the films opening, and when push came to shove, Grindhouse failed at the box-office with studio executives citing the extended runtime and debated whether audiences were apparently ready for such a project, all backtracking with tails between their legs it has to be said. Fortunately for the studio, its misfortune was limited to its domestic prospect and a decision was publicly made to release each film separately with additional footage. And so we have Death Proof, Tarantinos killer-on-the-prowl pseudo-homage to the muscle car road ragers from the 70s. 

Referential, post-modern filmmaking while becoming a patronising fanboy directors crutch, has been handed another layer of conceit by Tarantino who is arguably the most established trendsetter in this particular area of creating exaggerated pop-culture universes, a trait that hit its creative peak in Kill Bill: Volume 1 with a celebratory pastiche of high art and just as easily hit its nadir in Kill Bill: Volume 2 when it started to annotate its own artistic debts by stretching for self-reflexive intelligence. 

In his truest follow-up in Death Proof (marketing karma perhaps after the painful splitting of Kill Bill), he carelessly flirts with the sweet spot just between silly hyperbolic kitsch and an essential recreation of the genres milieu and irreverence. Theres a certain symmetry to the chaos that Tarantino whips up with his palette pointedly set on deconstructing the genre from within that at times recalls his best work and also his worst, which possibly derives from the inevitable indecision of presenting a grandiose homage or a modernised renovation of his frisson soaked inspiration. 

From an intellectual standpoint, Death Proof attains its grind-house stripes. Being visually confident enough to stage some balls-to-the-walls stunts and setpieces that never really sustains itself, it has an aesthetically opulent style that keeps the screen constantly busy. Ultimately, it offers up some entertaining schlock (and considering its budget and pedigree, Id expect nothing less) that lacks any durable depth. But from an instinctive point of view, Death Proof is much too slick and polished and contradictory to recreate the sort of anti-establishment impertinence its predecessors professed by simply existing to get the piece of the pie, no matter how small. 

What Tarantino achieves on his own when he does not simply amalgamate the tropes hes come to love is his distinctive style of dialogue that holds no pretenses and is always direct to the point with a purpose of building his characters (especially gorgeous cardboard cut-out femmes who he expects us not to take seriously at first glance) with an action speaks louder than words ethos. This is an important aspect to discern because it makes this film less a straight up homage and more like a Tarantino grind-house lovefest, even to the point of showing congenial originality and a personal touch despite its many throwaway resemblances to films of yore. 

But above all the thematic gambits, Tarantinos bulls eye as a director was to not wrangle in Kurt Russells emphatic performance as Stuntman Mike, a psychotic boogeyman in an indestructibly menacing muscle car whose cat-and-mouse games continue on with Tarantinos harem of Midwest beauties. Russell does leave a lasting impression for many reasons, and is on the level of Uma Thurmans turn as The Bride in Kill Bill so its just unfortunate theres not too much else to get excited about when its just not invested enough for a truly memorable revision of cult cinema.