Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Death Proof


As most of you readers know by now I do not like to read about movies before I see them, so I avoided reading articles about this movie, but I read the headings of many articles and most were not positive. So, today when I started reading about this movie is no surprise what I found with half liking the movie and half disliking it. I’m glad that I read after I saw it, as I would have not seen it if I read before and I’m so glad because, me for one I liked a lot more that what I could ever imagined this movie.

Quentin Tarantino is a director that “plays” absolutely with everything and in cinematic terms he is almost a perfectionist with impeccable technique according to me. I liked Pulp Fiction and a lot more Kill Bill 1 & 2. With this movie I laugh out loud as even if there is no comedy here, he makes fun of the ‘70s movie style, the kitsch sexploitation of that era and everything that is related to pop culture and he does it so well that is very funny in a satirical way. You don’t have to take this movie seriously in the narrative and what you see as the story; but take it very seriously as cinematic technique.

Following his Kill Bill duo of “girlie action flick” we also find some of this here and gee it is so reinvigorating to see women in action -in what I can call “crazy action”- when they do the car chase in the second story that will blow your mind, believe me. The first is a horror story and expect lots of blood and craziness; the second is not horror is more like a “Starsky & Hutch” type. The link between both stories is psycho Stuntman Mike played by Kurt Russell, with a very good performance and it was a surprise to find that it was not Tarantino’s first choice for the role.

In the first story you will find four female characters played by Sydney Poitier (Jungle Julia), Rose McGowan (Pam), Venessa Ferlito (Arlene) and Jordan Ladd (Sharma). The second story you will find another four female characters played by Rosario Dawson (Abernathy), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Lee), Tracie Thorns (Kim) and Zoe Bell (Zoe). In both stories you have almost all the time a lot of conversations about the most irrelevant things women talk including sex; the horror scenes and the car chase action are really small but quite violent.

I could write a lot more about this great movie, but I will just close reminding you that this movie is Tarantino’s homage to 70’s American B cinema that some consider to be the worst of American cinema and is filmed on-purpose like a B-movie.

The movie was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

Not for all audiences, my best reference is that if you liked Kill Bill 1&2 you probably enjoy Tarantino’s style and perhaps will like this movie even if here you have a lot less action and a lot more female conversations.

I do recommend this movie to some of my loyal readers, as I believe you can enjoy it as much as I did.

Enjoy!

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