Film Review: Death Proof

While Rodriguez exaggerates the mainstays of the exploitation genre to the point of parody, Tarantino comfortably modernizes the same customs with his contribution, the vehicular thriller Death Proof. Kurt Russell is the darkly seductive Stuntman Mike, whose vocation needs no explaining. The seemingly-nice Mike, however, lives for destroying the lives of young ladies with his reinforced, death-proof car.

The film is essentially divided into two acts. In the first, Mike takes out a group of nice girls, including a blond-haired Rose McGowan and the daughter of Sidney Poitier (the homonymically-named Sydney Poitier). The second act, where the film's real heart is, features a different group of girls (including Rosario Dawson) giving Mike a taste of his own medicine-resulting in one of the best car chase scenes since The Italian Job.

With Planet Terror, Rodriguez attempts to make a film outside his own era, while Tarantino only manages to make a Tarantino film-which is nothing to scoff at. Minus a few dropped frames and overlapping sound sequences, the film displays no marks of '70s cheapies, lacking the discoloration of Planet Terror. The film has all the markers of QT. Foot fetishes, developed dialogue, a bad-ass black protagonist? Check, check and check (the Samuel L. Jackson-channeling Tracie Thoms).

Tarantino's failure to recreate a snuff film probably comes from his familiarity with infusing the genre into his own flicks. With Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown under his belt, Tarantino is no stranger to wannabe exploitation films. Even if it doesn't manage to be pure grindhouse fodder, Death Proof is structurally stronger than Planet Terror and benefits from a great performance by the infectiously charismatic non-actress Zoe Bell (the real-life stuntwoman doubled for Uma in Kill Bill).

Modern experimental film projects usually fall short of bearable-how many moviegoers flock to a Lars von Trier Dogme95 film? However, Rodriguez and Tarantino manage to brew up some cinematic magic that opens a portal back to the golden age of the movie-watching experience.