At The Fleapit: Death Proof

Who'd have thought that Death Proof would be Quentin Tarantino's first chick flick? But it turns out that Rachel enjoyed this tale of a scar-faced stuntman who gets off on killing young women with his 'death proof' car more than I did.

One of my main problems with the film is that Tarantino seems to have turned into a parody of himself, abandoning plot and character development for long scenes of women talking trash amongst themselves (his dialogue certainly lacks the wit and sparkle of "the old days") followed by high-speed car chases.

But it comes to something when the muscle cars are hotter than the chicks... and, to be honest, most of the characters in Death Proof are so two-dimensional that you can't help but be drawn to the cars (not that I know anything about cars).

What passes for a story in Death Proof is a group of girls in a bar - talking endlessly - then getting trailed (and killed) by Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell stealing the first half of the film).

Mike ends up in hospital. There is a strange sequence with the sheriff from Kill Bill. Mike gets out of hospital 14 months later and pretty much tries to do the same thing again... only this time the girls turn the tables on him.

It's not exactly the Bride's world-spanning quest for revenge (from Kill Bill) or a multi-layered tale of interesting, interlocking underworld characters (Pulp Fiction), but neither is it a million miles from the self-indulgent yawnfest that was Jackie Brown (although at least there are several incredible car chases in Death Proof) or the bewilderingly mediocre Kill Bill Volume II.

Tarantino has been doing the British chat show circuit for the last couple of weeks, but this only highlights the fact that at the moment, as a filmmaker he is a great raconteur, talking a better film than making one.

A particularly harsh review on Radio 2 this morning said he had obviously made a film that he wanted to see, but did he have to inflict it on the rest of us?

An homage to the '70s grindhouse movies, the movie comes complete with scratches, black and white sequences, missing frames etc - but the novelty of these gimmicks (which will mean nothing to 90% of today's cinema going audience anyway) soon wears thin and thankfully Tarantino also seems to pretty much abandon them by the time the second half of the film kicks off.

Death Proof isn't boring, as Rachel's enjoyment of it proved, but it's very light-weight and insubstantial for an auteur capable of much better (Kill Bill Volume 1, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction).

It still manages to be creepy in parts and gruesomely violent in others, but you can't escape the feeling that it's really the work of some other film maker who has tried to make a film in what he thinks is "the style of Quentin Tarantino".