Title: Death Proof
Year: 2007
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Lead: Kurt Russel, Zoe Bell
Rated: NR
A stuntman hunts down and kills beautiful girls with his "death proof" car.
Never has a director come along and redefined and owned every genre he has ever dabbled in until now. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained) can literally take any genre of cinema and make a movie that sets the bar for every future film to follow. Death Proof is no exception. Quentin takes 70's driving movies that played in grindhouses and made it a 2000's driving movie that plays and continues to play in your memory. This movie is a germ. It gets in your brain and won't let go for awhile. Everything about it is infectious; the music, dialogue, cars and stunts are all so on point that it won't let you go even after you've finished watching it. I do have to say that when watching it for the first time, it did play a little slow which really got me down, but let it go, you'll get into it and it will blow you away.
This is one of the best car movies I've ever seen, the stunts and effects are so good that you'll find yourself wanting to re-watch just the car scenes. I'm just going to say this: The car chase in this movie is the best car chase in film history. It's so ballsy and so insane that you'll be sweating the whole time. The acting is pretty incredible with lines being delivered so crisp and rhythmic that it might just be one of the better written Tarantino movies out there (a case could be made that Tarantino movies are all the best written movies around). Zoe Bell plays herself in this film, if you don't know who she is, she was the stunt double for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, she's tough as nails, you'll see why in Death Proof. Kurt Russel is so awesome, he is scary and all kinds of crazy in this movie.
Like I said, Quentin has taken our memories of 70's "b" movies and added this one to the top of the list. Death Proof is the second half of "Grindhouse", a project by Tarantino and his best friend Robert Rodriguez. It was a double feature presentation that was meant to resemble the double features of the drive-in age. The two films were played back to back with fake trailers in between, including one for "Machete" which Rodriguez went on to actually make with Danny Trejo. The two movies even replicated the scratched film and missing reels that were ever present in grindhouses during their time. Grindhouses got their names in part because they would repeatedly "grind" film prints through the projectors 24 hours a day, damaging them beyond recognition. It's really a fun treat that adds some character to the movie and is also a great piece of work by Tarantino's late friend, and main film editor, Sally Menke. Check this film out, it's incredible. 9/10
