Last updated 17:03, Friday, 21 March 2008

DVD Reviews with Andrew Clarke

THE problem with Quentin Tarantino’s recent movies is that they are so steeped in obscure references to film history that you feel you aren’t getting full value if you don’t have a film studies degree in your back pocket.

Take the Kill Bill films, for example. They were reasonably good, but gave such a knowing wink to other offerings in the kung-fu genre that a lot of what took place was lost on the average viewer.

The same can be said of his latest, Death Proof, a tribute to the so-called grindhouse movies of the 1970s that Tarantino grew up with.

These movies, for those who aren’t familiar, are when two exploitation films (those with low production values made simply for a profit) would be shown back-to-back in American theatres with adverts in between.

Death Proof was originally given its cinema release alongside Planet Terror in the States, complete with fake adverts in the middle, but the double feature proved a box office flop. So the makers cut their losses and released the films separately in Britain and, as a stand-alone flick, Death Proof works well.

The premise for the film is a good old-fashioned car chase caper. It follows a group of young women on a road trip and their meeting in a bar with the creepy yet charming stuntman Mike (played brilliantly by Kurt Russell).

Mike boasts that his car – a Chevy Nova – is “death proof” and quickly proves it when he stalks the women and brutally murders them in a deliberate high-speed crash. Fast forward 14 months and Mike has his sights set on another group of women, but gets more than he bargained for when he tries to take them, and their car, on.

Death Proof is an enjoyable film in its own right, and doesn’t appear to gain anything from the low production values that are deliberately applied to it to give it the grindhouse feel.

As you would expect from a Tarantino-penned film, the dialogue is razor sharp, filled with humour, and unflinching. But what you perhaps don’t expect, given his back catalogue of leading male characters, is that he writes equally well for the predominantly female cast.

But the scratchy camera work and the temporary loss of colour, deliberately done to remind viewers what the film is supposed to be, is jarring rather than endearing, especially if you aren’t nostalgic for this genre in the first place. But despite the rather self-indulgent approach, Death Proof is a tense film that combines great dialogue with gripping action and a scene-stealing performance from Russell to boot.

Next time, the biopic of the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Control.